The Supreme Court issued a notice to the Centre today in connection with pleas contesting the ban on a controversial BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and charges related to the Gujarat riots of 2002.
A bench chaired by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud heard two petitions and requested the original record of the decision to remove the documentary from the public domain.
The petitions question the use of emergency powers to prohibit the documentary and erase social media connections. According to a plea filed by lawyer ML Sharma, the restriction on the two-part documentary was “malafide, arbitrary, and unconstitutional” because it was never properly announced.
Veteran journalist N Ram, activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan, and Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra have all filed separate petitions.
On January 21, the Centre, utilising emergency powers under the Information Technology Rules, 2021, issued directives for removing various YouTube videos and Twitter posts giving links to the controversial documentary “India: The Modi Question.”
Following the prohibition, many opposition politicians, including Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, shared the two-part BBC series, and student organisations and opposition parties organised public screenings.
Students battled with college officials and police on many campuses after being denied permission to perform screenings, and several were temporarily arrested.
According to reports, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry ordered Twitter and YouTube to block the first episode of the BBC documentary after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak distanced himself from it, saying he “doesn’t agree with the characterization” of his Indian counterpart in the UK parliament by Pakistan-origin MP Imran Hussain.
The documentary has been labelled by the government as a “propaganda work” that lacks objectivity and shows a colonial attitude.
A Supreme Court-ordered investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing by PM Modi, who was Chief Minister of Gujarat at the time of the February 2002 riots.
