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Senior journalists N. Ram and Arun Shourie and advocate Prashant Bhushan have jointly moved the Supreme Court against a law that allows criminal contempt challenging the constitutionality of Section 2(c)(i) of the Contempt of Courts Act 1971, which deals with the offence of criminal contempt on the ground of "scandalizing the court or lowering the dignity of the court".
They said the contempt law in question was unconstitutional, rooted in colonialism and produced a chilling effect on free speech and expression.
Their petition, filed through advocate Kamini Jaiswal, focusses on the legality of Section 2(c)(i) of the Contempt of Court Act. The section holds that it amounts to criminal contempt if a person publishes, by words spoken or written or by any other act, anything “which scandalises or tends to scandalise or lowers or tends to lower the authority of any court
