We don't have an ego; rarely take action: Supreme Court on IMA President's comments against it in Patanjali case

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that it was not convinced by the apology affidavit submitted by Indian Medical Assocation (IMA) President Dr RV Asokan over his comments criticising the Court in an interview..While interacting with Dr Asokan, a Bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Ahsanuddin Amanullah said,"Dr. Asokan, you are also a citizen of this country. The amount of criticism judges face, why don't they react? Because personally we don't have much of an ego, we are magnanimous. We are entitled to take action, but very rarely we do."Justice Kohli went on to say,"We do that seldom...We use our discretion with some sense of responsibility. But that does not mean you go to town with these kind of comments! What would you have done if other side made these kind of comments? You would have come running to this Court!".The Court was dealing with a case filed by the IMA against Patanjali Ayurved over misleading ads published by Patanjali which disparaged modern medicine.In a previous hearing in the matter, the Court had told the Association to put its house in order and address unethical practices in modern medicine and hospitals like prescribing expensive medicines.On April 30, it took strong exception to comments made by Dr Asokan against the top court in relation to the Patanjali misleading ads case. In an interview to the press, he had said that it was "unfortunate" that the Supreme Court criticised the IMA and said that its statements have demoralised private doctors.."We would have expected more sense of responsibility from you," Justice Kohli told Dr Asokan, who was present for the hearing today."You can't vent your feelings against the Court in the press like this. What made you go suddenly like this?" Justice Amanullah asked.Dr Asokan then unconditionally apologised for his comments.The Court, however, said that it was not happy with Dr Asokan's affidavit."Whether we should accept your statements after such damaging statements? You are the one who dragged the other side to the Court saying they are denigrating you, but when you are put to test..."The Bench went on to ask,"Why you did not give a public apology? Everything was written in black and white, why did you not make amends if you truly wanted to apologise? You could have gone to the same agency (PTI) and said what you are saying on affidavit now...What did you do to redeem yourself after the interview? Tell us.".As the Court contemplated taking judicial notice of the issue to send a message, Justice Kohli said,"We are the first one to uphold the freedom of free speech. But there are times when there should be self-restraint. As IMA President, you should have had self-restraint. We didn't see that in your interviews.".Supreme Court reserves verdict in contempt of court case against Patanjali over misleading ads