By INDRADEEP BHATTACHARYYA

Last week, as advocate and BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay stood in the Supreme Court arguing for his own petition on hate speech, he must have remembered that not-so-distant afternoon at Jantar Mantar, less than 3km away, where, at an event reportedly organized by him, open genocide calls were made against Muslims, or, the Dharm Sansad in Haridwar, where he distributed copies of ‘Bhagwa Samvidhaan’ and referred to Yati Narsinghanand as his ‘Gurudev’.

Upadhyay filing a public interest litigation (PIL) in the apex court for implementing the Law Commission report to curtail hate speech is a case of mind-boggling irony; one that requires what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called willing suspension of disbelief, to fathom; one that is so bizarre and brazen that as a journalist writing on it, you wonder if you are missing something.

In February 2020, Upadhyay filed a PIL in the apex court in his personal capacity seeking a direction to the Centre to take appropriate steps to implement recommendations of the Law Commission’s 267th report on hate speech. The commission had submitted its report to the erstwhile minister for law and justice Ravi Shankar Prasad on March 23, 2017. After analyzing the existing laws on hate speech, it recommended “amendments to the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and the Code of Criminal procedure, 1973 by adding new provisions on ‘Prohibiting incitement to hatred following section 153B IPC and ‘causing fear, alarm or provocation of violence in certain cases’ following section 505 IPC, and accordingly amending the First Schedule of the CrPC.”

On page 38, the report defines hate speech as an “expression which is abusive, insulting, intimidating, harassing or which incites violence, hatred or discrimination against groups identified by characteristics such as one’s race, religion, place of birth, residence, region, language, caste or community, sexual orientation or personal convictions.”

On September 21, 2022, while hearing the PIL by Upadhyay along with 10 other petitions, a division bench of Justices K M Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy came down heavily on TV channels and news anchors saying that hate speech on television goes unregulated and poisons the fabric of the country.

Read the full story here:- https://www.altnews.in/from-dharm-sansad-to-hate-speech-pil-the-curious-case-of-ashwini-upadhyay/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=newpost