More trouble for Kunal Kamra? Stand-up comic likely to face contempt of court over 'vulgar' tweet against CJI

Stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra, marked by multiple allegations of "anti-natonal" humour, may have found himself in a pickle once again. Regarding the comedian's latest tweet targetting Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sharad Arvind Bobde, contempt of court proceedings are likely to be initiated.

Attorney General of India KK Venugopal has granted the consent to initiate contempt of court proceedings against Kunal Kamra under Section 15 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1975.

Earlier, advocate Anuj Singh had sought to initiate contempt of court proceedings against the stand-up comedian over the latter's November 18 tweet.

The tweet in question consists of Kamra posting a picture of two of his fingers which in front of an airplane window. The caption read, "One of these 2 fingers is for CJI Arvind Bobde... ok let me not confuse you it’s the middle one"

According to Live Law, the Attorney General of India, while granting the permission today to initiate contempt proceedings against the stand-up comedian, noted, "The depiction of the two fingers, with the legend that he means the middle one, is to deliberately insult the Chief Justice of India which would equally be an insult to the Supreme Court of India itself, which the Chief Justice heads."

The statement added, "The said tweet is grossly vulgar and obnoxious, and I have no doubt that it would tend to lower the authority of the Supreme Court of India as well as undermine the confidence that the litigant public have in the institution of the Supreme Court of India itself."

A day ago, the Parliamentary Committee of the central government had sought a reply from Twitter within a week on why it has not yet taken action against the "offensive tweets" by stand-up comic Kunal Kamra which targeted Chief Justice of India and the Supreme Court.

The chairperson of Joint Committee for Personal Data Protection Bill alleged that the committee has doubts about algorithmic and physical manipulation done on the social media giant.

"When a tweet defaming the CJI gets 30-35 thousand likes, it shows that the whole nation thinks like that, which is not the reality. We have doubts that somebody is physically and algorithmically manipulating the data... If any company wants to do business in some country, they have to abide by the rules of the host country. Defaming the constitutional authorities is not part of our culture," BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi, chairperson of the parliamentary panel had said.

Twitter recently apologised for incorrectly geo-tagging Ladakh as a part of China and has promised the panel that it will be corrected by November 30.