A division bench of Calcutta High Court headed by Justice I.P. Mukerji on Friday modified the order passed by Justice Krishna Rao restraining chief minister Mamata Banerjee and three other Trinamul leaders from making adverse comments against the Bengal governor at least till August 14.

“The Supreme Court in several cases observed that freedom of speech is a fundamental right, which cannot be curbed,” the division bench held. The bench, however, added: “But it should be kept in mind that the speech must be true and not contemptuous.”

Following these observations, the division bench sent back the case to the court of Justice Rao to ascertain whether the remarks by Mamata and other TMC leaders were contemptuous.

The division bench made its observations while dealing with appeals by the chief minister and Trinamul Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh. They had challenged the interim order passed by Justice Rao a week ago restraining the appellants from making any adverse comments against governor C.V. Ananda Bose.

Justice Rao’s interim order had followed the defamation case against the chief minister, Ghosh and two other newly-elected MLAs — Sayantika Banerjee and Reyat
Hossain Sarkar.

Referring to an alleged incident of molestation of a Raj Bhavan employee by Bose, Mamata had told reporters at Nabanna that the newly elected members of the state Assembly had told her that they were afraid to go to Raj Bhavan to take oath from the governor.

According to the petition that Bose had filed before Justice Rao, Ghosh had also made some adverse comments against him during an interaction with the media. The governor had made Ghosh, Mamata, Sarkar and Banerjee parties to the case.

The single-judge bench had fixed August 14 for the next hearing of the case and issued the interim order restraining Mamata and the three other respondents from making any further comments against Bose.

Challenging the validity of the interim order passed by Rao, both Mamata and Ghosh had moved the division bench headed by Justice Mukerji.

Former advocate general S.N. Mookherjee fought the case on Mamata’s behalf.

Mookherjee argued that the chief minister’s remarks on a particular issue did not amount to contempt of court. “The courts cannot restrain any person from expressing something or making any comment on any issue of public interest,” he said.