SC cracks whip on hate speech: ‘buck stops with government’

In the wake of growing incidents of hate speech, the Supreme Court on Friday said the “buck ultimately stops with the government” to clamp down on  hate speech  and hate crimes, as they are offences committed on the society. The top court was hearing a batch of pleas seeking steps to be taken against hate speech incidents. A bench of Justices K.M. Joseph and B.V. Nagarathna were hearing the pleas.

“We would not have liked the government to come in at all, but in certain areas when religious freedom, harmony and orderly progress is gravely affected, it has to intervene… Today what are we fighting about? We have more important things to achieve as a nation — people are starving without jobs,” Justice K.M. Joseph observed. The remarks from the Bench came after Uttar Pradesh informed the court that it had registered 580 cases of hate speech in 2021- 2022. Of these, 160 were suo motu registered by the police. Uttarakhand said that it had registered 118 cases. “This [hate speech] is a complete menace, nothing short of it,” Justice Joseph said.

The apex court also came down heavily on TV channels and said that channels are driven by agenda and they sensationalize news to compete with each other ultimately creating divisions in society. The court expressed reservation over the current state of TV news channels in India saying they are creating divisions in society since such channels are driven by agenda and compete to sensationalise the news. It asked the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) and the Central government about how it can control such broadcasts.

“Everything is driven by TRP. Channels are basically competing with each other. They sensationalise it. How do you control this? You create divisions in society because of the visual element. The visual medium can influence you much more than a newspaper… Our audience, are they mature enough to see this content?”, Justice Joseph asked.

The bench asked said that offending anchors should be “taken off air” and hefty fines should be imposed on channels which are violating the programme code. Justice Joseph asked the counsel representing the News Broadcasters and Digital Association, “If the anchors of TV programmes are themselves part of the problem then what can be done? NBSA should not be biased. How many times have you taken off anchors?”

The Central government said that it is planning to introduce comprehensive amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) to tackle hate speech.

“We are contemplating a separate amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code. That is the stand of the Union of India,” Additional Solicitor General (ASG) KM Nataraj, appearing for Centre informed the apex court.