New Delhi, Jan 28 (PTI) Freedom shall thrive only if it is guaranteed by the freedom of speech and expression as secured by the Indian Constitution, a Delhi court said on Tuesday.

Special judge Vishal Gogne made the observation while dismissing a defamation case filed by BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor against Chief Minister Atishi.

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The judge said it was visible that political discourse, especially preceding elections, was mired by opposing leaders accusing each other of specific instances of corruption, saying that "these allegations are part of the freedom of political speech".

He said that to view the allegations by Atishi regarding poaching of MLAs in the context of defamation, in isolation from the established debate on such topics would be to employ a harsher standard for one political outfit viz Aam Aadmi Party.

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In all these discourses, the political question must be answered by the court of the people through elections and not the courts of law through discussions on defamation, the judge said.

"Allegations made by Atishi regarding poaching of MLAs are as much a part of the right to free political speech as they are an effort to report a specific act of alleged corrupt practice. There is no particular reason for the court to discern hightened sensitivity of an allegation and treat it as defamatory only because it is made against the ruling party of the day," the judge said.

He said that freedom of speech and expression was secured by the Indian Constitution.

"Freedom per se shall thrive only if it is guaranteed by the freedom of speech and expression as is secured by the Indian Constitution. It is the freedom of speech as an overarching principle which permits one man's subaltern to be another man's naxal, it permits one man's freebie to be another man's welfare, it even permits one man's martyr to be another man's militant," the judge said.

It is also not at all alien for the contemporary discourse to even doubt freedom fighters as abdicators, he said.

The court said that each political formation was known to project its own vision of political, economic, social and cultural policy or vision to the electorate and often enough, these narratives allege violation of constitutional provisions, norms, morality or criminal law by the other.

"These diverse views are all sheltered by the Fundamental Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression. Why then must the criticism or allegations of political corruption, poaching of elected representatives or the purported misuse of investigation agencies by the ruling dispensation against small political opponents be outside the protective umbrella of the freedom of speech.

"This right forcefully enables the existence of different political views and the right of opposition parties to elicit accountability in public affairs," it said.

The judge said that the accountability of the government and the ruling party was a primary expectation of the electorate and that there ought to be a wider latitude to criticism and specific allegations made against the government or the ruling party.

The judge said that summoning Atishi for the offence of defamation in the present allegations "would be suppressive of the freedom of speech and the accountability of public office".

"The repercussions of entertaining the present complaint upon the freedom of speech, by resorting to a low threshold for perceiving defamation, are sublime but certainly not invisible to the court," he said.

The judge said that if the interpretation of the complainant was accepted, almost every top leader of every political party in India would become liable to prosecution for defamation.

"The complainant perhaps does not realise that the embers from the hearth can often set the house aflame. What goes around may come around," he said.

The judge said that the statements by Atishi were not out of sync with the general content and tenor of political debate concerning accountability and corruption.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)