Supreme Court dismisses PIL seeking directions to ensure Times of India readers get full paper copy

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a plea seeking directions to ensure that buyers of the Times of India newspaper receive complete copies of the paper, along with all supplements and magazines [GS Rathore v. Union of India and anr].

A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta asked the petitioner, one Gauri Shanker Rathore, to take up the issue with his local newspaper hawker instead of moving the top court.

“All you have to do is tell your hawker to provide you all the supplements and the Sunday magazine etc. You can’t come in Article 32,” the Court said.

The petitioner had sought directions from the Court to the Central government as well as the Times of India (respondents) to ensure that complete copies of the Times of India were available to all its buyers.

He further prayed for directions to the respondents to restrain any cheating of newspaper readers through the non-supply of newspaper supplements or a shortfall in the published newspaper pages.

Another prayer was for a direction to Times of India to donate ₹10 crores to needy animal shelters or other such welfare initiatives.

The petitioner, Rathore, today argued that the newspaper had adopted discriminatory categories in the supply of its editions and supplements to readers.

“The discrimination and inequality lack intelligible differentia and rational nexus,” he submitted.

The Court, however, remained unconvinced.

“Is Times of India a State that we can entertain a writ petition against them?” it asked.

The Bench suggested that the issue was more of a consumer or private grievance that could be resolved locally rather than through constitutional litigation.

Rathore maintained that members of the public were facing similar issues and that he had already written to the newspaper on this matter.

“The public is suffering. I have already written to them,” he told the Bench.

However, the Court, in a lighter vein, suggested another way to raise the issue.

“You should start a social media campaign against Times of India. They’ll come running to your house. As it is, newspapers are facing a lot of difficulty,” the Court remarked.