Why So Touchy About Tharoor’s Remark?: SC to BJP Leader
Supreme Court Urges Closure of Defamation Case, Citing Need for "Thick Skin" for Political Figures.
- The Supreme Court has urged BJP leader Rajiv Babbar to close his defamation case against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.
- The case concerns Tharoor’s “scorpion on a Shivling” remark about Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
- A bench of Justices MM Sundresh and N Kotiswar Singh said public figures should have “thick skin” and not be so “touchy” about such statements.
GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 1st Aug: The Supreme Court on Friday urged BJP leader Rajiv Babbar to close the defamation case he filed against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor over the latter’s “scorpion on a Shivling” comment about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A bench of Justices MM Sundresh and N Kotiswar Singh questioned the need for public figures to be so sensitive to such remarks.
“Let us close all these things. Why to get so touchy about all this? This way, administrators, political persons and judges come in the same group and have thick skin,” the court remarked. The court was hearing a plea by Tharoor against a Delhi High Court order that had refused to quash the case. The matter was adjourned at the request of Babbar’s counsel.
This is not the first time the Supreme Court has expressed such a view on the case. Last year, a different bench had stayed all proceedings and remarked that the metaphor, which an unnamed RSS leader had made to a journalist in 2012, could be interpreted as showing the Prime Minister’s “invincibility.”
The defamation complaint against Tharoor stemmed from his statement at the Bengaluru Literary Festival, where he claimed he was merely quoting an RSS source who had used the metaphor to express frustration with PM Modi. The Delhi High Court had previously refused to quash the case, prompting Tharoor to appeal to the apex court.
