Lawyers said movie timings must be entirely market-driven and left to the public to decide. Making rules to control licence conditions should not be at the cost of Constitutional rights of others, say legal eagles.
Harish Salve, former solicitor general, told TOI that he has already tweeted that "Maharashtra government needs to reconsider its diktat on Marathi films. Power of licensing is NOT the power of content control. Forcing a cinema to show any movie is a violation of free speech.''
Darius Khambata, former Maharashtra advocate general, said, "In a democracy, it is better to encourage and incentivize rather than exercise any compulsion, which might violate fundamental rights of citizens."
Senior counsel S G Aney called the order "discriminatory''.
"Article 14 of the Indian Constitution as well as other fundamental rights, including the right to free speech and freedom of trade, are being affected here." He added, "This kind of order, if extended, would permit interference by the government in any walk of life with such short-sighted decision-making."
Another senior counsel from Delhi, J P Cama, said the CM must consider providing sops or other incentives to the film industry and its distributors. "It cannot be the other way round, to force cinema house to show their films at a certain hour."
But Mihir Desai, a civil activist lawyer, said the issue is complicated. "The state can impose conditions on licence. It will be unreasonable only if theatre owners are able to show that it affects their business drastically. I don't think it is a freedom of speech issue here."
http://ift.tt/SenKjV to equality and freedom of trade,diktat on Marathi films,Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis
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