The Supreme Court on Thursday (5 October 2023) rejected a petition seeking to criminalize controversial, derogatory, and indecent remarks and behavior in Parliament. The court said, 'Parliament itself has such powers where it is capable of taking action on such incidents.'

This case was being heard by a bench of seven judges headed by the Chief Justice. Hearing the matter, a bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice AS Bopanna, Justice MM Sundaresh, Justice PS Narasimha, JB Pardiwala, Sanjay Kumar and Justice Manoj Mishra said, whatever the elected members say inside the House that is their prerogative.

The Supreme Court made it clear that slogans defaming political opponents in Parliament or Assemblies cannot be termed as part of a criminal conspiracy, and it would not be right to bring it into action.

Senior Supreme Court lawyer Raju Ramachandran said in his petition that if any representative in the Assembly or Parliament can take legal action by holding him responsible for what he said in Parliament, then this ill help in curbing unparliamentary words. During this, Ramachandran mentioned the recent incident of a BJP MP in the Parliament in which he was seen targeting the minority BSP MP.

There is a party named Jharkhand Mukti Morcha. An MLA of this party was accused of taking some money in 2012 to vote in her favor in the Rajya Sabha MP election, hence there should be a case against that MLA for taking bribe. The MLA said that these are baseless allegations. Whom he will vote for inside the House is entirely his own opinion. Amidst this debate, the court made this comment and dismissed the case.