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‘Hypersensitive’: Bombay HC Quashes FIRs Against Congress Leader Who Criticsed BJP Minister (thewire.in)

To invoke Section 153A of the IPC, the statements must be "judged on the basis of what reasonable and strong-minded persons will think" and not on the basis of the "views of hypersensitive persons who smell danger in every hostile point of view".

 Ruling in favour of a Pune-based Congress worker who staged a protest outside Maharashtra’s higher and technical education minister Chandrakant Patil’s residence, the Bombay high court on Monday observed that the right to express one’s views is a protected and cherished right in India’s democracy and cannot be taken away merely by accusing a person of threatening harmony.

01/03/2023

'Tis the Season of Literary Events – And Censorship (thewire.in)

Just last week, on February 24, veteran Hindi writer Ashok Vajpeyi said in a social media post that he had been invited to a poetry event titled ‘Arth – The Culture Fest’ in Delhi that weekend, where he had to recite his poems in a session called ‘Kavita Sandhya’. But, Vajpeyi said, the organisers forbade him from reading poems that were political in nature or critical of the government. He refused to attend the event, saying, “This kind of censor[ship] is unacceptable.”

Early in February, as the Vidarbha Sahitya Sammelan was being organised in Uttar Pradesh’s Nagpur, journalist and author Ashutosh Bhardwaj had said in a tweet that the sponsors were allegedly “warned” by some local groups against some of the authors invited to the conference. The organisers eventually asked four of them – Aakar Patel, Josy Joseph, Shruti Ganapatey and Shivam Shankar Singh – to withdraw.

by Meenakshi Tewari

01/03/2023

https://youtu.be/RVgKUaPmp-E?t=480

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