After a pendency of well over 20 years in the Supreme Court, a seven-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant took less than half-an-hour on Tuesday (October 6, 2026) to dispose of as infructuous a reference related to questions linked to legislative privilege being used to choke free speech , arising out of a 2003 Tamil Nadu Assembly resolution to arrest editors of The Hindu for an editorial criticising then Chief Minister Jayalalithaa .
Shortly after the resolution, the police raided The Hindu ’s Chennai office, attempting to arrest its senior editors. Ravi, the then Editor of The Hindu , approached the Supreme Court. In November 2003, N.
The Constitution Bench said the withdrawal of the resolution escaped the notice of the Supreme Court.
On Monday (October 5), the very eve of the Constitution Bench hearing, Mr. On the petitioners’ suggestion, the Court left the larger and substantial questions of law open for a future occasion in an appropriate case. Senior advocate A.M. Singhvi remarked light-heartedly that the Court had set two records, shortest hearing and the quickest one by a seven-judge Bench. Ramachandran, backed by Attorney General of India R. Venkataramani and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, had brought the fact of the withdrawal to the attention of Chief Justice of India. Mr. Ramachandran had submitted that the fact of the withdrawal was not noticed by the Court nor recorded in its order referring the case to the seven-judge Bench a couple of months ago in August.
He had said the reference would only be an academic exercise now. Chief Justice Kant had said the Court did not want to get into a prolonged academic exercise, particularly when several other part-heard matters were pending.
