Listen to this article:

The following is the full text of the keynote speech delivered by Justice Madan Lokur at the prize distribution ceremony of the Danish Siddiqui Journalism Awards 2026 at New Delhi on April 5.

At the outset, I would like to say a few words about Danish Siddiqui, a photo-journalist of eminence. Unfortunately, he passed away while on an assignment in Afghanistan in 2021 at the young age of 38 years. However, during his lifetime, he achieved great recognition and was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize, in 2018 and posthumously, in 2021. In late 2021, he was posthumously awarded the Journalist of the Year 2020 by the Mumbai Press Club. While presenting the annual Red Ink Awards for Excellence in Journalism, the then Chief Justice of India described him as a man with a magical eye, rightly regarded as one of the foremost photo-journalists of this era. He said, “If a picture can tell a thousand words, his photos were novels.”

We have long discussed our fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression and freedom of the Press guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of our Constitution. We have also discussed restrictions and curtailment of this right over the years. I would like to discuss the aggressive use of censorship as another form, though of somewhat recent development, of curtailment of this fundamental right. 

During the Constituent Assembly debates, some honourable members suggested including freedom of the Press as a separate fundamental freedom. I would imagine this suggestion was made given the history of gagging the Press during the British Raj by invoking a variety of laws. One of the more celebrated cases that most of us have read or heard about is that of Bal Gangadhar Tilak being charged and convicted of sedition for his writings. However, Dr. Ambedkar was quite clear that freedom of speech and expression encompassed freedom of the Press and his view was accepted. During the debates, he categorically stated:

“The press is merely another way of stating an individual or a citizen. The press has no special rights which are not to be given or which are not to be exercised by the citizen in his individual capacity. The editor of a press or the manager are all citizens and therefore when they choose to write in newspapers, they are merely exercising their right of expression, and in my judgment therefore no special mention is necessary of the freedom of the press at all.”

The view expressed by Dr. Ambedkar was accepted by the Supreme Court in among the first few cases decided in 1950, that is, in the case of Romesh Thapar. The Governor of Madras (not the same person we have heard so much about, but somebody else) had prohibited circulation of the weekly newspaper Cross Roads in the then state of Madras. The prohibition was challenged in the Supreme Court and while quashing the prohibition, it was held that, “…freedom of speech and of the press lay at the foundation of all democratic organisations, for without free political discussion no public education, so essential for the proper functioning of the processes of popular government, is possible.” Incidentally, and by way of trivia, the case was filed in February 1950 and decided three months later in May.

Since the pronouncement by the Supreme Court more than 75 years ago, it has been widely accepted, without demur, that freedom of the Press is integral to freedom of speech and expression. 

In addition to this case, restrictions on the freedom of the Press were placed but of a non-violent nature in the sense that in the case of Sakal Papers, the Newspaper (Price and Page) Act read with the Order enacted thereunder placed a direct linkage between the number of pages in a newspaper and the price at which it was sold. This obligated the newspaper Sakal to either reduce the number of pages or to increase the sale price. On a challenge made, the Supreme Court held the Act and the Order were unconstitutional and also stated the obvious, namely, that the only restrictions which may be imposed on the rights of an individual under article 19 (1) (a) are those which Article 19 (2) of the Constitution permits and no other. A similar restriction on the availability of imported newsprint and limiting the size of a newspaper to 10 pages was struck down by the Supreme Court in the case of Bennett Coleman a few years later.

During the internal emergency between 1975 and 1977, restrictions on the freedom of the Press began taking a somewhat........

© The Wire