The Supreme Court on April 23 did not take up a series of petitions about the continuing incidents of hate speech across the country.
The petitions were listed before a Bench headed by Justice Sanjeev Khanna.
Justice Bela M. Trivedi, who heads a separate Bench of the Supreme Court, was a puisne judge on Justice Khanna’s Bench on Tuesday. Usually, Justice Dipankar Datta forms the Regular Bench with Justice Khanna.
By afternoon, the Bench discharged the board while retaining only a handful of cases for detailed hearing for the rest of the day.
The petitions had routinely come up in the court’s causelist amidst the furore over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks at a Rajasthan election rally that alleged that the Congress, if elected to power at the Centre, would distribute people’s property, land and gold among Muslims.
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In October 2022, a Bench of the top court headed by Justice K.M. Joseph (now retired) had rued that it was “tragic what we have reduced religion to” in the 21st century and a “climate of hate prevails in the country”.
In 2018, the Supreme Court, in its judgment in the Tehseen Poonawala case, had concluded that it was the “sacrosanct duty” of the state to protect citizens from hate crimes.
