If you don’t like the toolkit, ignore it: Supreme Court

Supreme Court of India today stated, “If you don’t like the toolkit, ignore it,” while hearing a petition by Advocate Shashank Shekhar pleading that an investigation by National Investigating Agency (NIA) be carried out against India National Congress for its toolkit and that the party should be derecognised if it was found to be guilty of anti-national activities.

The petitioner had objected to the use of the term “Indian variant” by the Congress, when referring to the mutated Corona virus, responsible for the spread of COVID 19. The petitioner pointed out that Singapore had objected to the use of the term ‘Singapore variant’.

The petition came up before the Bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and M R Shah, which refused to entertain it as Justice Chandrachud said that the petition was frivolous and was wasting Supreme Court’s time. He said the court cannot control forms of political propaganda. 

On the Supreme Court’s suggestion, the petition was withdrawn.

The toolkit by Congress had become controversial over the use of the term ‘Indian variant’. In public debates, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)condemned the Congress for the use of the term, while the Congress defended itself saying the term was used by the Government of India in its affidavit before the Supreme Court.

BJP official spokesperson Sambit Patra had run into trouble for his tweet over Twitter with the document he claimed was the Congress toolkit. However, Twitter marked that document as ‘manipulated’.