The story so far: 11 Members of Parliament and 30 other prominent figures including advocates, journalists and social activists on February 14 issued a statement expressing discontent over the Kerala High Court’s verdict upholding the transmission ban on Malayalam news channel MediaOne, imposed by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, after the Ministry of Home Affairs denied the channel security clearance. The channel went off air on January 31, as the Centre suspended its telecast over “security reasons”. One of the reasons for disappointment conveyed over the verdict is that the High Court’s decision was based entirely on assessment of documents presented by the MHA in a sealed cover, “the contents of which were not shared” with the news channel.
The statement was issued by the opposition MPs including Congress’s Digvijaya Singh, TMC’s Mahua Moitra, DMK’s Kanimozhi and Shiv Sena’s Priyanka Chaturvedi, besides Supreme Court lawyers Prashant Bhushan and Colin Gonsalves.
According to the statement, basing the verdict on sealed or secret documents went against “the basic principles of natural justice”. It pointed out that the said principles mandate that in any process of adjudication, especially one that involves fundamental rights, evidence “must be shared with both parties to the dispute.”
