Sanatana Dharma Remark Row: SC Dismisses Petitions Seeking FIR Against TN DyCM Udhayanidhi Stalin

Chennai: The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed petitions seeking the registration of a FIR against Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister and DMK youth wing leader Udhayanidhi Stalin for his controversial remarks on Sanatana Dharma. 

In September 2023, Udhayanidhi had at a seminar in Chennai called for eradicating of Sanatana Dharma just as dengue and malaria had to be done away with. 

Following this, an advocate B Jagannath and two others had filed three separate writ petitions against Udhayanidhi before the Supreme Court seeking to declare his speech regarding Sanatana Dharma as unconstitutional illegal, and violative of Article 25 of the Constitution. The petitioners also sought a direction to the Director General of Police to register a First Information Report (FIR) against him and take further action. 

This case was heard before the Supreme Court and notice was ordered earlier.

“Today (Monday) when the matter came up for hearing before honourable Justices Bela M Trivedi and Prasanna B Varale, Mukul Rohatgi represented the State argued that the writ petitions were not maintainable,” Udhayanidhi's counsel and Rajya Sabha MP P Wilson said in a statement in Chennai. Wilson too opposed the petitions. 

“After hearing the counsels for some time, honourable Justices Bela M. Trivedi and Prasanna B. Varale expressed concerns about the maintainability of the writ petition under Article 32 and decided to dismiss it,” Wilson said. 

“Upon recognising the court’s viewpoint, the petitioner’s senior counsel Dama Seshadri Naidu requested permission to withdraw all the writ petitions, with the liberty to pursue remedies available under the law. 

The court dismissed the writ petition while granting this liberty.

“Thus the Supreme court refusing to entertain the writ petitions and direction to register FIR’s and proceed against Udhayanidhi Stalin is seen as a great victory in the cases filed against him for his alleged hate speech,” he said.