SC admin seeks explanation from officials over listing of plea filed by Arun Shourie, N Ram and Prashant Bhushan

The Supreme Court administration has called for an explanation from officials concerned over the listing of a plea filed by former union minister Arun Shourie, veteran journalist N Ram and activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan in which they have challenged the constitutional validity of a legal provision dealing with criminal contempt, official sources said on Saturday.

According to the cause list on the apex court website on Saturday morning, the petition was scheduled to come up for hearing through video-conferencing before a bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and K M Joseph on August 10.

Apex court sources maintained that the plea should have been listed before the bench which is already seized of similar matters, in line with the established practice.

"As per the practice and procedure in use, the said matter should have been listed before the bench which is already seized of a similar matter, but it has been listed by ignoring established practice and procedure. In this regard, explanation from officials concerned has been called," a reliable source said.

However, after a couple of hours the matter was dropped from the cause list on the apex court website.

In their petition, Ram, Shourie and Bhushan have challenged the constitutional validity of a legal provision dealing with criminal contempt for "scandalizing the court", saying it was violative of freedom of speech and right to equality.

The petition has challenged the validity of Section 2(1)(c) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 as being vague, unconstitutional and incompatible with the basic features of the Constitution.

The provision defines what constitutes criminal contempt and says that if by way of publication of words, the dignity of the courts is lowered and if they scandalize the courts then the offence of contempt of court is deemed to have been committed.

The petition has alleged that the provision violated the freedom of speech and expression.

The filing of the plea challenging the validity of the provision assumed significance in view of the fact that a three-judge bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra on July 22 had issued a show cause notice to Bhushan after taking note of a petition urging it to initiate criminal contempt proceedings against him for his alleged tweets against the judiciary.

The apex court had on August 5 reserved its verdict on the contempt case against Bhushan.

The top court is also seized of another criminal contempt case against Bhushan which was initiated in 2009 over his alleged comments against former CJIs in an interview given to a magazine.