-The Telegraph Bombay High Court today said the “arbitrary” arrest of cartoonist Aseem Trivedi had breached his Freedom Of Speech and expression. The court also said it intended to lay down guidelines for application of the pre-Independence sedition law to ensure that liberties guaranteed to citizens in a civil society are not encroached upon. “How can you (police) arrest people on frivolous grounds?” it said. The court had on Tuesday granted bail to Trivedi,...

Between 2009 and February 2011, at least 14 people were charged with sedition in India London: The typical citizen could be forgiven for fearing that the world’s largest democracy is hurtling towards George Orwell’s 1984 rather than 2013. In late August the government’s department of telecommunications, citing the “communal tensions” around Assam, blocked more than 300 individual web addresses, including the Twitter profile pages of some journalists. It also ordered a limit...

-Live Mint India, with its myriad ethnic and religious groups, has more legal speech restrictions than other democratic nations Freedom Of Speech is impossible to agree about. While hardly anyone will dispute that freedom of expression is essential for a democratic society and an effective free market, almost no one will be able to agree about exactly where to draw the line. In one corner, fighting for unbridled expression in various degrees, you...

-The Indian Express The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the media to be partially restrained while reporting judicial proceedings by drawing a “Lakshman rekha” for what it called balancing the freedom of expression and a fair trial. But the apex court refused to impose blanket restrictions saying guidelines on reporting cannot be framed across the board. The court laid down the partial line of restraint through the principle of “postponement of publication”,...

-Live Mint Court says aggrieved party can seek temporary postponement of a matter by moving the appropriate court  Mumbai/New Delhi: The good news for those who deal in news is that the Supreme Court decided against framing guidelines for covering so-called sub judice matters, or those before the courts. The bad news is that by delivering what some analysts are calling an ambiguous judgement, the apex court may have well made it easier...