Sanatana Dharma Row: Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Plea Against Udhayanidhi Stalin

New Delhi: Strong opposition from the Tamil Nadu government notwithstanding, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a fresh petition seeking registration of an FIR against Tamil Nadu minister Udhayanidhi Stalin and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) over his controversial remarks about Sanatana Dharma.

A bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela M Trivedi tagged the plea, filed by lawyer Vineet Jindal, that stated comments of MK Stalin’s son Udhayanidhi’s constituted hate speech.

The latest plea will be heard along with a pending case on the matter for which notice was issued last week.

During Wednesday’s brief hearing, Tamil Nadu Additional Advocate General Amit Anand Tiwari raised objections over the entertaining of the writ petition.

“These are public interest litigations in the nature of publicity interest litigation. There are 40 writ petitions filed across the country in different high courts. It makes it incredibly difficult for the state. Now, everyone is coming up as a public interest litigant for publicity,” Tiwari argued.

“We are not issuing a notice, but tagging this with the other one,” Justice Bose responded.

In his plea, Jindal questioned why Tamil Nadu police did not comply with Supreme Court’s direction to initiate suo-motu criminal proceedings against hate speech and called for contempt of court action against Delhi and Chennai police.

On September 2, Udhayanidhi compared Sanatana Dharma with ‘dengue’ and ‘malaria’, saying that it should be ‘eradicated’.

“Few things cannot be opposed, that should be abolished only. We can’t oppose dengue, mosquitoes, malaria, or corona. We have to eradicate this. That’s how we have to eradicate Sanatana,” Udhayanidhi said at the Sanatana Abolition Conference’.