Chennai: Madras High Court has dismissed a plea filed by a woman advocate for a direction to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi “to take back his wife and provide her a dignified life”.
She had filed the PIL relying on media reports of Modi's declaration of his marital status, identifying his wife, while submitting his nomination papers last month for the Lok Sabha elections.
Dismissing the public interest litigation on Wednesday, a vacation bench of Justices S Manikumar and T S Sivagnanam said “Averments made in the supporting affidavit are baseless and without any proof. The writ petition is nothing but a publicity oriented writ petition. This Court is not inclined to entertain it.”
Noting that the right to privacy is an individual's right to be left alone and that the media should not cross its ‘Lakshman Rekha' to invade individual's privacy, the judges said: “What is an information to others, according to a journalist, could be a personal and sensitive information to an individual. The boundary between freedom of press and privacy of individual is the ‘Lakshman Rekha' and if the media crosses the line of boundary, the invasion starts.”
