Subramanian Swamy v. Solicitor General: Centre opposes Swamy’s plea against hate speech

Court room number 2 of the Supreme Court witnessed a war of words between BJP leader Subramanian Swamy and Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar yesterday as the Centre opposed Swamy’s plea assailing the Constitutionality of “hate speech” provisions in Indian Penal Code..The petition has its genesis in the summons issued by Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Karimganj, Assam against Swamy for alleged hate speech. Swamy had sought for quashing the summons while also challenging the Constitutionality of Sections 153, 153A, 153B, 295A, 298 and 505 of the Indian Penal Code 1860 ,all of which deal with the offences popularly labelled as “hate speech”..A Bench presided by Justice Ranjan Gogoi had issued notice in the case last year with respect to the prayers concerning the Constitutionality of the provisions. It had, however, asked Swamy to approach the appropriate courts with regard to the cases filed against him..When the matter came up for hearing before Justices Anil R Dave and AK Goel yesterday, it was no holds barred as Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar proceeded to call the case a “personal interest litigation”..“Your lordship, there is no public interest involved. It is a personal interest litigation”, he said..Swamy retorted saying that,. “You are misrepresenting the whole thing. I am only on the Constitutionality of hate speech laws. The individual cases have been challenged in the appropriate courts.”.The Bench, however, was not inclined to entertain the case. It asked Swamy to challenge the Constitutionality before the High Court where he had already challenged the criminal cases slapped against him..“How many High Courts will I go Your Lordships. Already my matters are pending in Gauhati and Delhi High courts. FIRs have been registered in different parts of the country. It is not possible for me to travel around”, he said..Swamy also said that the “proliferation of FIRs being filed under these vaguely worded provisions has a chilling effect.”.The Bench continued to be disinterested prompting Swamy to ask the Court to remand the matter back to the Bench which had issued notice in the case..The Court, however, said that it will keep the matter pending till July so that Swamy can arrive at a decision on whether to withdraw the matter or not. The court then posted the matter for July 11..Interestingly, during the final stage of the hearing, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi also rushed to the court though the hearing had concluded by then. Later on, Swamy took to twitter and had this to say:.Image of Ranjit Kumar taken from here.