The Gujarat High Court on Tuesday reserved its order on the constitutionality and validity of the State government’s notification banning the publication, sale and distribution of expelled BJP leader Jaswant Singh’s book on Mohammad Ali Jinnah in the State.
As the three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice K. S. Radhakrishnan on Tuesday resumed the hearing on a public interest litigation filed by two writers challenging the validity of the State government’s notification, an affidavit in the name of Additional Secretary (Home), Dhananjay Dwivedi was filed before the court on behalf of the State government.
The State government reiterated that it could issue another notification giving details of the grounds for imposing the ban on the book. The affidavit said such details were not issued in the first notification because it was not in favour of publicising those matters in the book on which the ban order was issued so that the objectionable parts did not come to the knowledge of people.
Petitioners’ advocate Anand Yagnik, however, raised objections to the government’s stand, pointing out that by agreeing to issue another notification the government had virtually admitted that its August 19 notification was defective and did not stand the scrutiny of the court. The government should not be given time to issue another notification.
The court is expected to issue its order on Wednesday unless it prefers to wait for the outcome of a similar case in the Supreme Court on a petition filed by Mr. Singh himself.
