The Supreme Court on Wednesday set aside the Madras High Court verdict, which prohibited the use of names and photographs of former Chief Ministers, party leaders or living personalities, along with symbols and insignia of political parties, in government welfare schemes.
The Bench of Chief Justice India BR Gavai, Justice K Vinod Chandran and Justice NV Anjaria further allowed the Special Leave Petition filed by the State of Tamil Nadu challenging the High Court verdict.
Terming the writ petition pending before the High Court as ‘misconceived’ in law, the Apex Court dismissed the same with a fine of Rs 10 lakh.
It observed that political battles should be settled before the electoral roll and courts should not be used for this.
The top court of the country said it failed to understand why the petitioner (AIADMK Member of Parliament CV Shanmugam) was anxious about the Tamil Nadu government scheme with Chief Minister Stalin’s name in it, when a similar phenomenon was followed across the country.
If the petitioner was so concerned about the misuse of public funds, he should have challenged all such schemes, it added.
On August 2, the Madras High Court prohibited the use of names of any living individual, photographs of any former Chief Ministers and ideological leaders, or any party insignia/emblem/flag in advertisements related to government welfare schemes.
The Bench of Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice Sunder Mohan passed the interim order on a petition filed by AIADMK Member of Parliament C Ve Shanmugam seeking directions to restrain the state from naming welfare schemes after living political personalities or using their photos, as well as party logos or symbols in promotional materials.
The Counsel appearing for the petitioner argued that a new scheme was being launched using the current Chief Minister’s name, images of ideological leaders and the ruling party’s symbols, in violation of Supreme Court guidelines and the 2014 Government Advertisement (Content Regulation) Guidelines.
The Counsel representing the state government termed the petition politically-motivated. He contended that the documents presented were unauthenticated and not official government publications. He sought time to file an affidavit with the correct material.
The High Court observed that using images of ideological leaders or former Chief Ministers was prima facie contrary to the Supreme Court verdict in State of Karnataka vs Common Cause & Others. Including the names of political figures in the title of a government scheme was also not allowed.
Using the name of any ruling political party, its insignia/logo/emblem/flag also appeared to be prima facie against the directives of the Supreme Court and the Election Commission of India, as also mentioning the name of the living political personality in the nomenclature of the government scheme, it noted.
However, the Apex Court ruling permitted publishing the photograph of the current Chief Minister, added the High Court.
The Bench further observed that the pendency of the plea would not prevent the Election Commission of India from initiating proceedings based on the petitioner’s complaints and listed the matter for further hearing on August 13.