IIPM

Took long enough after publication of the original Caravan article, and yet again proves that strategic litigation against public participation (SLAPP) can be quite effective at stifling or at least significantly delaying dissent...

Live Law

A Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Madan Lokur has transferred to the Delhi high court the four-year old Rs 50 crore defamation suit by the Delhi-based Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) that was filed in Silchar, Assam, which had in 2011 passed an injunction against the Delhi-based publisher of The Caravan magazine for a hard-hitting profile of its founder Arindam Chaudhuri.

Communications minister Kapil Sibal has instructed the Information Technology (IT) department to appeal against the 14 Feb Gwalior court order blocking almost 80 web pages critical of the Arindam Chaudhary owned management institute IIPM.

Sources told the Times of India that the department of telecommunication was not made a party to the order asking the Director General of Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In) to block the allegedly defamatory web pages. [TOI]

The order blocking the web pages, including one with a University Grants Commission (UGC) public notice declaring that IIPM was not a university, and others such as a tweet publishing IIPM’s financials as obtained from the registrar of companies, invited wide online-commentator outrage. [Read Medianama’s compilation of daily updates over the last week]