Wily Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s losing streak continued again with the Calcutta High Court asking her government to make available all the leading newspapers and periodicals, including those critical of her at all the state-run and aided public libraries in the state. The court’s Thursday order came, 15 months after Mamata ordered the removal of most English-language newspapers.The loss of face comes on the heels of her immature and ill-advised spat with the Eelection Commission, on which she lost humiliatingly from both the HC and the Supreme Court.
A division bench of chief justice Arun Mishra and justice Joymalyo Bagchi directed the Trinamool Congress government to notify within two weeks the names of leading newspapers, many of which had been struck off from the list of publications available in state-run and aided libraries last April, after they began to criticize her string of failures.Passing the order on a PIL in this regard, the court also said if the government failed to take the step within two weeks, then the court would be compelled to take necessary action. There are around 2,500 state-run librariesin the state. The matter would come up for hearing again on July 17.Counsel Basabi Rai Chowdhury had filed the petition before the court claiming that the action of the government amounted to violation of Article 19 of the Constitution which provides for freedom of speech and expression.
The order was slammed by the Left with its leader Sitaram Yechury saying this is "worse" than censorship and that it had shades of "fascism".The ban on some of the dailies also led Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju to seek a response from Mamata on the order restricting the number of newspapers to be subscribed by the libraries to a prescribed list.
