SURAT SINGH Vs. DES RAJ

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Shri Surat Singh has presented this petition against Shri Des Raj Chowdhry. Leader, Congress Party, Delhi Municipal Corporation and Shri Ranbir Singh, Chief Editor, Milap Daily, Delhi under section 3, 4 and 5 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1950. This petition deserves to be reproduced in extenso:

(2.) In the writ petition (C.W. 448 of 1967) on the basis of the pendency of which these contempt proceedings have been initiated, Shri Kishore Lal, Member, Delhi Municipal Corporation, had challenged the order of the Mayor of Delhi said to have been announced on 28-4-1967 rejecting the said Kishore Lal's nomination. In the writ petition, the challenge to the impugned order relevant for our purposes, is contained in paragraph 10(b) and reads as under :

(3.) The English translation of the portion of the article on which reliance is placed in support of the application for action for contempt of Court, has already been reproduced in paragraph 3 of the application. It is argued by Dr. C. B. Aggarwal, the learned Advocate for Surat Singh, that this part of the article tends to interfere with the due course Of justice in so far as the hearing of the writ petition is concerned as it is calculated to prejudice the mankind against his client. As desired by us, the entire article in Urdu published in the 'Daily Milap' dated 24-7-1967 was read out in original, in Court, so that the overall tendency and purport of the article read as a whole be properly understood, but the only portion on which the charge contempt is sought to be substaptiated by Shri Aggarwal is what has been B incorporated in paragraph 3 of the petition reproduced above. The remaining part of the article, which is fairly lengthy, relates to the acute political rivalry between the Jan Sangh party and the Congress party and is concerned concerned with the criticism of the Jan Sangh in regard to its political activities. To the remnaming part of the article, no reference at all has been made and the petitioner's has confirmed himself exclusively to the passage reproduced in his petition.