Rajasthan HC Dismisses Plea for FIR Against Modi, Shah on CAA Implementation 

The Basis of the Petition

The case submitted to the High Court was founded on the point that the speeches by the Prime Minister, Modi and the Home Minister, Shah were provocative and could cause enmity among various religious communities. This action was claimed by the petitioner to involve inflammatory utterances on the part of the leaders in their defense of the CAA. The plea asked the court to order the police to file an FIR, which is the initial move in any police enquiry of a possible crime.

The basis of the petitioner argument was that the speeches breached the Indian Penal Code provisions concerning the encouragement of disharmony and enmity based on religious grounds. The leaders were not merely explaining a government policy in their statements but hate speech according to the plea. The petitioner wanted the court to intervene and put the leaders to task over what they termed as divisive rhetoric over the controversial citizenship law.

Basically the petitioner was petitioning the court to consider the political speeches as a criminal offense. The legal case was focused on pushing the limits of the freedom of speech, especially with regards to the well-placed government officials. It raised the question of whether their outward defense of a new law could be legally deemed an offense that should be investigated by the police to bring the case out of the area of political discussion into a criminal court.

A Brief Overview of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019 is a legislative act that was legally enacted by the Indian Parliament on the 20th of December, 2019 and it is an amendment to the original Citizenship Act of 1955. It was mainly aimed at giving Indian citizenship to certain religious minorities who escaped religious persecutions by three of its neighbors, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The qualified communities in this act are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who immigrated to India on or before December 31, 2014.

The adoption of the CAA caused riots and discussions in the whole nation. The opponents of the law believe that the law is discriminatory as it does not include Muslims in the list of eligible communities, and so is against the secular provisions of the Indian Constitution. They voiced their anxiety that the CAA along with a proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) might turn into a tool to disenfranchise Indian Muslims who might lack the necessary paperwork to establish their citizenship.

The government on the other hand has been adamant that the CAA was a humanitarian law aimed at assisting persecuted minorities that had settled in India. They claim that it is not a law against the Muslims, since it does not concern the citizenship of any Indian citizen, even the Muslim. The government position is that the CAA is a humane act to give the people that have endured religious persecutions in the mentioned Islamic dominated countries a dignified life.

The High Court’s Legal Standpoint

By rejecting the petition the Rajasthan High Court must have reached the conclusion that the speeches that the Prime Minister and the Home Minister had committed were not a cognizable offense. This is the legal term that means a crime, which can be arrested by the police without the warrant and an investigation can be started. The court would have critically scrutinised the text of the speeches and have found them to have been within the confines of political speech and exposition of policies.

The courts tend to be wary of meddling in political affairs as well as are reluctant to order inquiries against elected leaders because of their utterances in public affairs unless there is definite indication of conveying violence or hate. Most likely, the court considered the speeches as an act of communicating to the people the stand of the government regarding a new law and not that of causing communal unrest. The legal bar of speech needs to be high in order to commence criminal prosecution.

Moreover, the ruling of the court supports the concept of separation of powers, according to which the judiciary does not intervene in the executive and legislative spheres. It would be an unprecedented move to file an FIR against the highest leadership of the country to clarify a law that was enacted by Parliament. The dismissal by the court indicates that it considered the petition to be of no legal importance and there was no justifiable purpose of establishing a precedent regarding a judicial intrusion into political communication.

The case of this decision of the Rajasthan High Court illustrates the thin line between the freedom of speech and the legislation of hate speech. Political leaders in a democratic society are often known to indulge in very hard rhetoric in order to justify their actions and criticize their opponents. The courts tend to be restraining and appreciate that political expression even when it is sharp or controversial is part of the democratic process that cannot be criminalized easily.

Several court and political issues that the government had to deal with the CAA included the petition against PM Modi and Amit Shah. The legislation has been challenged in Supreme Court and implementation of the law has been a significant issue of political debate. This refusal to accept this plea in Rajasthan is not an isolated judicial decision, but reflects a larger judicial trend that does not interfere with policy issues or political expression unless the violation of constitutional rights or criminal law is proven.

Even in this case, the judiciary, being a judge, comes out as a clear determiner of real grievances and politically-driven litigation. The role of courts is to make sure that the legal procedure does not serve as a means of political revenge. The High Court decision to reject the request of an FIR has sent the message that a disagreement with a government policy or a statement made to justify said policy is not in itself a sufficiently good ground to institute a criminal investigation into the leaders of the nation.