Maharashtra Assembly's privilege notice against Shobhaa De stayed by SC

April,29,2015: The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed a breach of privilege motion notice issued against writer and columnist Shobhaa De by the Maharashtra Assembly over her tweets against the State government’s direction to multiplexes to show Marathi films on prime time.

A Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C. Pant took serious note of the fallout suffered by the writer for tweets expressing her views as a citizen in a democracy.

“It has never been so extreme in our country. All she is accused of tweets, she has been tweeting a lot and has been satirical,” senior advocate C.A. Sundaram, representing Ms. De, submitted.

Before this, Maharashtra legislature principal secretary AnantKalse had issued a notice on April 10 to writer Shobhaa De asking her to explain her tweets about the state government’s decision to make it mandatory for multiplexes to screen Marathi movies during prime time. Meanwhile, the court has confirmed that De had merely expressed her opinion on this issue and was entitled to do so.

The court asked the chairman, principal secretary and the Special Rights Committee of the Maharashtra Legislature Secretariat to file their responses within eight weeks.