THE Attorney General Tuesday declined to grant consent to initiate criminal contempt of court proceedings against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for his remarks against the judiciary.
AG KK Venugopal opined that the alleged contemptuous statement made a general reference to the judiciary and contained no specific reference to the Supreme Court or judges of the Supreme Court
“I am of the opinion that the statements in question are too vague to be said to have lowered the authority of the Supreme Court in the eyes of the public”, the AG held.
AG was responding to a letter from advocate Vineet Jindal who sought the former’s consent to prosecute Gandhi under the Contempt of Court Act.
Jindal took exception to Gandhi’s comment saying that the ‘ruling party in central government inserted its people into judiciary’.
The consent of either the Attorney General or the Solicitor General is necessary under section 15 of the Contempt of Courts Act 1971, for initiating contempt proceedings against a person.
The article was originally published in The Leaflet.
