Attorney General KK Venugopal has granted consent to initiate contempt of court proceedings against comic artist Rachita Taneja at the request of a law student.

In his letter granting consent, the AG has stated that Taneja's tweets portray that the "Supreme Court of India was biased towards the ruling party."

After the Supreme Court granted interim bail to journalist Arnab Goswami, Taneja, who operates the twitter handle @sanitarypanels, tweeted a cartoon depicting the BJP, the Supreme Court, and a reporter with the text "Tu Janta Nahi Mera Baap Kaun Hai" (you don't know who my father is).

In his letter seeking permission to initiate contempt proceedings against the cartoonist, law student Aditya Kashyap attached an excerpt of another tweet dated August 7 this year, which stated,

“Let’s not forget how we got here.”

The caption is accompanied by a caricature that depicts a quid pro quo relationship between the judiciary (especially, retd. Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi) and the Central government in delivering the Ayodhya Judgment.

Another tweet by Taneja which the AG has flagged as contemptuous one carrying the text “Arnab gets bail, real journalists get jail, independent judiciary is fail.”

This caption comes with the picture of the Supreme Court with a saffron flag masted on its top and engraved “SANGHI COURT OF INDIA”, thereby depicting that the Supreme Court’s allegiance is to an ideology and not to the Constitution.

In this light, Kashyap's letter states,

"The tweets and posts mentioned herein and the publication thereof scandalizes the Hon’ble Supreme Court, insinuates and attributes motives behind judgments of the Court. The line between humor and contempt of the Court has also been clearly violated. These posts not only erode the trust in the institution of justice by casting aspersions on the justice delivery mechanism, but also interferes with administration of justice. The tweets and posts are based on the distorted facts, inspired by malice, and amount to committing of ‘criminal contempt’."

Granting consent for contempt proceedings, the Attorney General has informed the law student that the tweet by Taneja implicates a proposition as if the "Supreme Court is biased towards the ruling party."