Final hearing on December 4 on PIL plea against ban on books: J&K High Court

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Monday refused to give notice on the public interest litigation (PIL) petition against the loss of 25 books in the union territory but fixed December 4 as the final date for hearing.

Hearing CPI(M) leader and Kulgam MLA MY Tarigami’s PIL plea, the Bench comprising Chief Justice Arun Palli and Justices Rajnesh Oswal and Shahzad Azeem said: “Most people will not understand the issue. How can you understand?” [Mr. Tarigami] Do you know that all people are worried? For this reason, no notification will be made,” he said.

However, the Full Board set December 4 as the final hearing date.

Lawyer Vrinda Grover said she was “grateful to the court.” “I think he treated the matter with the importance and urgency it deserved. The court showed its intention to finally hear and decide the matter,” the lawyer said.

The Full Bench of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court was constituted on September 30 after the Supreme Court directed all petitioners to approach this bench.

In August this year, the Home Ministry of Jammu and Kashmir, under Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, invoked Chapter 98 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 to classify 25 books as “lost due to false narrative and propaganda of separatism”.

These include Christopher Snedden, AG Noorani, Radha Kumar, Sumantra Bose, Ayesha Jalal, Sugata Bose, Arundhati Roy, Stephen P Cohen, Anuradha Bhasin, Seema Qazi, David Devdas etc. There were books by prominent authors such as.

In his petition, Mr. Devdas told the court that the lost work was published in 2007 after almost a decade of painstaking research and was initiated by a former Governor of Jammu and Kashmir and a former R&AW officer, which “highly praised him”. “There is in fact no close connection between the content of the petitioner’s work and any incident or disturbance that has occurred since the work was first published in 2007,” Mr. Devdas’s petition states.

The defense argued that “a vague, ambiguous and general statement about 25 books cannot constitute a ‘basis of opinion’ in any way, especially in a situation where there are serious criminal consequences and fundamental rights are restricted.”