Kerala High Court Dismisses PIL Against Mother Mary Comes to Me’s Smoking Cover

 

The Kerala High Court has dismissed a Public Interest Litigation challenging the front cover of the upcoming book Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy, which features an image of the author smoking. The petitioner sought a stay on the sale of the book on the grounds that the cover lacked the statutory health warning mandated under tobacco control law. The division bench, comprising the Chief Justice and another Justice, emphasized that issues of this nature require statutory interpretation and factual assessment by the expert authority designated under the law, not direct adjudication by the High Court. The court noted that the Steering Committee under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act is empowered to act suo motu, and that any person can bring violations of Section 5 of that Act before it. The petitioner, despite being aware of the statutory mechanism, had declined to approach the competent authority and instead filed the writ petition without verifying whether the book carried disclaimers or whether the cover image violated the statute. The court further observed that the petitioner had not disclosed in the petition the disclaimer printed on the back cover, stating that the depiction of smoking was for representational purposes and that the publisher did not endorse tobacco use. The court held that invoking the High Court’s extraordinary jurisdiction under the guise of public interest litigation without exhausting the statutory remedy was improper, especially when the petitioner had not engaged with the legal position or verified essential material. The bench also cautioned against misuse of PILs for self-publicity or personal agendas. Given the circumstances, the court dismissed the writ petition, reaffirming that the correct recourse lies through the statutory framework rather than through direct judicial intervention.

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