Karnataka Government files response to Supreme Court over Kamal Haasan's 'Thug Life' release controversy
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], June 19 (ANI): The Karnataka government has filed its response before the Supreme Court concerning the ongoing controversy over the release of Kamal Haasan's film 'Thug Life' in the state.
In its affidavit, the state government clarified that it has not imposed any restrictions on the film's release and has assured to provide the necessary protection and security if the producers decide to screen the movie in Karnataka.
The government further confirmed that it would ensure the safety of those involved in the film's release, provided the producers choose to go ahead with the screening.
However, the government noted that the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC), the apex body of the Kannada film industry, had written to Kamal Haasan, requesting an apology for his controversial remarks about the Kannada language.
In the letter, the KFCC had expressed concerns over Haasan's comments that the Kannada language 'originated' from Tamil, which led to protests by various pro-Kannada groups.
The matter is scheduled to be heard before the Supreme Court today, June 19.
On June 18, Praveen Shetty, President of the pro-Kannada organisation Karnataka Rakshana Vedike, clarified that his group was not opposed to the release of 'Thug Life'.
However, he reiterated that Kamal Haasan should have apologized for his remarks regarding the Kannada language, as per the Karnataka High Court's recommendation.
Shetty emphasised that the controversy arose from Haasan's statement that Kannada had evolved from Tamil.
He said, 'We are not opposing the release of Thug Life. It was a simple issue. After hurting the sentiments of Karnataka by saying that the Kannada language has been born out of Tamil, he should have apologised as per the suggestions given by the Karnataka High Court. But since he went to the Supreme Court, we accept the order of the court.'
Despite the protests, Shetty also stated that curbing activism through the deployment of police was against the Constitution and the rule of law.
Karnataka's Deputy Chief Minister, DK Shivakumar, urged pro-Kannada organizations to abide by the Supreme Court's order regarding the release of the film.
The court had directed the state government to ensure the screening of Thug Life, despite the ongoing protests.
'We should all respect the order given by the court in the Kamal Haasan case. I appeal to pro-Kannada organisations that we should not cross our limits and should be peaceful. No one should take the law into their own hands. Our state is a peace-loving state,' said Shivakumar, addressing concerns of escalating tensions.
Protests had erupted in Karnataka after Haasan's remarks, with several organisations calling for a boycott of the film. The controversy over Haasan's comments regarding the Kannada language has led to an ongoing clash between the actor's supporters and pro-Kannada groups. (ANI)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
43 minutes ago
- Time of India
With Supreme Court ruling, another check on Trump's power fades
WASHINGTON : The Supreme Court ruling barring judges from swiftly blocking government actions, even when they may be illegal, is yet another way that checks on executive authority have eroded as President Donald Trump pushes to amass more power. The decision on Friday, by a vote of 6-3, could allow Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship to take effect in some parts of the country -- even though every court that has looked at the directive has ruled it unconstitutional. That means some infants born to immigrants without legal status or foreign visitors without green cards could be denied citizenship-affirming documentation like Social Security numbers. But the diminishing of judicial authority as a potential counterweight to exercises of presidential power carries implications far beyond the issue of citizenship. The Supreme Court is effectively tying the hands of lower-court judges at a time when they are trying to respond to a steady geyser of aggressive executive branch orders and policies. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Jesus' Tomb Is Opened And Scientists Find Something Unbelievable Novelodge Undo The ability of district courts to swiftly block Trump administration actions from being enforced in the first place has acted as a rare effective check on his second-term presidency. But generally, the pace of the judicial process is slow and has struggled to keep up. Actions that took place by the time a court rules them illegal, like shutting down an agency or sending migrants to a foreign prison without due process, can be difficult to unwind. Presidential power historically goes through ebbs and flows, with fundamental implications for the functioning of the system of checks and balances that defines American-style democracy. Live Events But it has generally been on an upward path since the middle of the 20th century. The growth of the administrative state inside the executive branch, and the large standing armies left in place as World War II segued into the Cold War, inaugurated what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. coined the "imperial presidency." Presidential power waned in the 1970s, in the period encompassing the Watergate scandal and the end of the Vietnam War. Courts proved willing to rule against the presidency, as when the Supreme Court forced President Richard Nixon to turn over his Oval Office tapes. Members of both parties worked together to enact laws imposing new or restored limits on the exercise of executive power. But the present era is very different. Presidential power began to grow again in the Reagan era and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And now Trump, rejecting norms of self-restraint, has pushed to eliminate checks on his authority and stamp out pockets of independence within the government while only rarely encountering resistance from a Supreme Court he reshaped and a Congress controlled by a party in his thrall. The decision by the Supreme Court's conservative majority comes as other constraints on Trump's power have also eroded. The administration has steamrolled internal executive branch checks, including firing inspectors general and sidelining the Justice Department 's Office of Legal Counsel, which traditionally set guardrails for proposed policies and executive orders. And Congress, under the control of Trump's fellow Republicans, has done little to defend its constitutional role against his encroachments. This includes unilaterally dismantling agencies Congress had said shall exist as a matter of law, firing civil servants in defiance of statutory limits, and refusing to spend funds that lawmakers had authorized and appropriated. Last week, when Trump unilaterally bombed Iranian nuclear sites without getting prior authorization from Congress or making any claim of an imminent threat, one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, stepped forward to call the move unconstitutional since Congress has the power to declare war. Trump reacted ferociously, declaring that he would back a primary challenger to end Massie's political career, a clear warning shot to any other Republican considering objecting to his actions. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, recently told her constituents that "we are all afraid" of Trump. While the immediate beneficiary of the Supreme Court's ruling is Trump, the decision also promises to free his successors from what has been a growing trend of district court intervention into presidential policymaking. In the citizenship case, the justices stripped district court judges of the authority to issue so-called universal injunctions, a tool that lower courts have used to block government actions they deem most likely illegal from taking effect nationwide as legal challenges to them play out. The frequency of such orders has sharply increased in recent years, bedeviling presidents of both parties. Going forward, the justices said, lower courts may only grant injunctive relief to the specific plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits. That means the Trump administration may start enforcing the president's birthright citizenship order in the 28 states that have not challenged it, unless individual parents have the wherewithal and gumption to bring their own lawsuits. The full scope of the ruling remains to be seen given that it will not take effect for 30 days. It is possible that plaintiffs and lower-court judges will expand the use of class-action lawsuits as a different path to orders with a nationwide effect. Such an option, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion, would be proper so long as they obey procedural limits for class-action cases. Still, in concurring opinions, two other key members of the conservative bloc, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, warned lower-court judges not to lower standards for using alternative means to issue sweeping orders in an effort to circumvent the ruling. Alito wrote that "district courts should not view today's decision as an invitation to certify nationwide classes without scrupulous adherence to the rigors" of legal rules. Thomas added that if judges do not "carefully heed this court's guidance" and act within limits, "this court will continue to be 'duty bound' to intervene." In a rare move that signaled unusually intense opposition, Justice Sonia Sotomayor read aloud a summary of her dissenting opinion from the bench Friday. Calling the ruling a grave attack on the American system of law, she said it endangered constitutional rights for everyone who is not a party to lawsuits defending them. "Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship," she wrote. "Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief." Sotomayor also said the administration did not ask to entirely halt the multiple injunctions against its order because it knew the directive was patently illegal, and accused the majority of playing along with that open gamesmanship. She, like the other two justices who joined her dissent, is a Democratic appointee. All six of the justices who voted to end universal injunctions were Republican appointees, including three Trump installed on the bench in his first term. The same supermajority has ruled in ways that have enhanced his power in other avenues. Last year, the bloc granted Trump presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts as president. The ruling, by Chief Justice John Roberts, asserted that presidents have absolute immunity for anything they do with the Justice Department and their supervision of federal law enforcement power. Emboldened, Trump this year has built on his approach from his first term, when he informally pressured prosecutors to investigate his political foes. He has issued formal orders to scrutinize specific people he does not like, shattering the post-Watergate norm of a Justice Department case independent from White House political control. The supermajority also has blessed Trump's gambit in firing Democratic members of independent agency commissions before their terms were up. The conservative justices have made clear that they are prepared to overturn a long-standing precedent allowing Congress to establish specialized agencies to be run by panels whose members cannot be arbitrarily fired by presidents. In a separate concurrence, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson offered a realpolitik take. The majority's exegesis of what powers Congress understood itself to be granting lower courts when it created them in 1789 was a smokescreen of mind-numbing "legalese," she wrote, obscuring the question of whether a court can order the executive branch to follow the law. "In a constitutional republic such as ours, a federal court has the power to order the executive to follow the law -- and it must," she wrote before striking a cautionary note. "Everyone, from the president on down, is bound by law," she added. "By duty and nature, federal courts say what the law is (if there is a genuine dispute), and require those who are subject to the law to conform their behavior to what the law requires. This is the essence of the rule of law." But Barrett accused her of forgetting that courts, too, must obey legal limits. "Justice Jackson decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary," Barrett wrote. "No one disputes that the executive has a duty to follow the law. But the judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation -- in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the judiciary from doing so." This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
CM rejects governor's claim of disrespect by education minister
Thiruvananthapuram: Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan rejected governor Rajendra Arlekar 's claim that general education minister V Sivankutty showed disrespect to him by staging a walkout from Raj Bhavan in the middle of an official function. The chief minister conveyed his opinion to the governor in a reply to the latter's letter, accusing Sivankutty of being disrespectful to him. In his letter sent to Raj Bhavan on Friday, Vijayan stated that the minister had no plans to show disrespect. Sivankutty behaved in a manner befitting a minister when he encountered non-constitutional flags and symbols at an official event. This was the duty of the minister, who is bound to show respect to the Constitution, said the chief minister. Vijayan also stated that only national symbols and flags should be used in official and ceremonial events organised at Raj Bhavan. This is the second time govt expressed disagreement with the governor regarding the use of Bharat Mata posters, generally used by RSS.
NDTV
an hour ago
- NDTV
Himanta Sarma Launches 'Emergency Diaries', Calls For Removing 'Secularism, Socialism' From Constitution
Guwahati: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, while addressing the media on Saturday at Vajpayee Bhawan, the state BJP headquarters in Guwahati, launched a book titled 'Emergency Diaries', highlighting the resistance and struggle during the Emergency, particularly emphasizing the role of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "Today, we have launched the book Emergency Diaries, which is basically about the struggle and resistance movement during that time organised by our Prime Minister Narendra Modi," Mr Sarma said. He added that it is now time to erase the legacies of the Emergency period, comparing it with PM Modi's ongoing efforts to remove remnants of colonial rule from Indian systems. "In the same spirit, we must work to wipe out the legacies of the Emergency. Two important legacies from that time are the insertion of the words secularism and socialism into our Constitution," he said. "I believe the word secularism contradicts Sarva Dharma Samabhava, which is a truly Indian concept. Similarly, socialism does not reflect our economic philosophy, which has always been about Sarvodaya and Antyodaya," he said. Launched the book 'Emergency Diaries' which chronicles Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri @narendramodi Ji's life during the emergency and how he resisted the draconian regime and its unlawful practices. 📍 Guwahati — Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) June 28, 2025 Calling the terms foreign impositions, Mr Sarma urged the government of India to consider removing them. "These two words were not part of the original Constitution but were inserted later by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Therefore, I request the government of India to delete the words socialism and secularism from the Preamble of our Constitution," he said.
