On Friday, a Delhi court deferred a hearing in Delhi Lieutenant Governor (L-G) V K Saxena’s 23-year-old defamation action against activist Medha Patkar. On November 14, the Saket sessions court will hear Patkar’s arguments.
On July 29, the sessions court hearing the case suspended Patkar’s five-month prison sentence. It also directed Saxena to respond to Patkar’s appeal against the punishment imposed by a magistrate court in Saket.
Saxena, then the chief of the Ahmedabad-based NGO National Council for Civil Liberties, ran an advertisement in 2000 against Patkar’s Narmada Bachao Andolan, which opposed dam building on the Narmada River. Patkar allegedly filed a “press notice” against Saxena. Patkar faced a slander claim in an Ahmedabad courtroom in 2001. Two years later, the Supreme Court directed that the case be relocated to Delhi.
In his response to the sessions court, Saxena stated that the appeal was not maintainable on the “sole ground that it has no signature by the appellant (Patkar) and is filed only under the written consent of the counsel”. He further claimed that the suit of appeal was filed under the “wrong provisions”.
On July 1, Judicial Magistrate (First Class) Raghav Sharma issued a one-month suspension of Patkar’s sentence under Section 389(3) of the CrPC to allow him to file an appeal against the order. On May 24, a Delhi court convicted Patkar in a defamation case.
Patkar’s lawyer, on the other hand, had previously claimed that there was no evidence that she had sent the “press note” to Saxena in 2000.