News on HC's displeasure over textbook printing was incorrect, says Kerala court

KOCHI: The Kerala High Court on Friday said news reports by vernacular media, including leading dailies and news channels, on Thursday that the court expressed displeasure at the state government over delay in printing school textbooks were incorrect.
In an interim order issued on Friday, justice K Vinod Chandran said the court was both “surprised and distressed” to see the widely-publicized reports while it had not expressed any opinion during the hearing on Wednesday.A lawyer had submitted to the court that he has filed an impleading petition and the matter was adjourned to July 8th get the views of the government. No arguments were addressed to the court nor any opinion was expressed or orders passed by the court, the order said.
It is the time for introspection when observations that are actually not made by the court are reported and widely publicized, the court said.
Reporting the judge’s observations in open court as opinions also has its ill-effect, the court said. The order stated, “While the ‘Fourth Estate’, in a democracy, is a powerful tool to trigger public opinion, keep it smouldering, stoke it and even ignite it, it will not be proper to prove the court into making an opinion or statement. Observations made and opinions expressed by the court in the course of arguments is only an attempt to understand the issue in the ‘lis’ (legal dispute). The prospect of such observations being reported as definitive opinion of the court often stifles an open discussion at the time of argument.”