Commercial Speeches Not Under Scrutiny

Suffering from rare genetic disorders like spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

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The five influencers are accused of making fun of the disabled and those suffering from SMA and visual impairment. Except Sonali Thakkar alias Sonali Aditya Desai, four influencers including Raina were present in the courtroom.

Justice Bagchi said the influencers should be more cautious while creating humor related to different communities especially when it pertains to "apartheid in the society".

"Much of this media block is used like feeding your own ego. It feeds on yourself and when you become too big and have so many followers... It's not only freedom of speech here. It is purely commerce...infact, there are various kinds of speeches and in the Amish Devgan case this court has classified various kinds of speeches like commercial speech and prohibited speech. This overlap of commercial and prohibited speeches is where you have no fundamental rights (sic)," Justice Bagchi said.

The bench allowed the intervention of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and asked Attorney General R Venkataramani to come up with guidelines to regulate the contents on social media while taking into account the views of all stakeholders.

Venkataramani said the government was in process of formulating the guidelines but ruled out any "gag order".