The Hindu : `Assembly punishment without allowing appeal wrong'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 23, 2003

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`Assembly punishment without allowing appeal wrong'

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI DEC. 22. The Indian Newspaper Society president and Press Trust of India chairman, M.P. Veerendra Kumar, today said that now there was a countrywide discussion on the issue of Assembly privileges following the action of the Tamil Nadu Assembly against the journalists of .

The main questions raised in these discussions were whether such privileges should be allowed to remain in the first place and how a body could punish without any provision for appeal.

He was speaking after receiving the first copy of the `India Book of the Year 2004,' brought out by and Encyclopaedia Britannica here. He pointed out that anyone sentenced by a lower court could always go on appeal to a higher court. But in the case of the Assembly privileges there was no such provision. This was not right. "Whenever anyone is sentenced, he or she should have the right to appeal," he added.

Agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan said the recent events had also shown that was a crusader for the independence of the media, which was the bedrock of democracy. "Once the bedrock is affected, the democratic principles crumble," he said.

He recalled K.R. Narayanan's speech on the eve of the 50th anniversary of India's independence; the then President had noted that the two things India could be proud of were the achievement of self-sufficiency in food and the nurturing of the democratic system.

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