The concept of contempt of court

The concept of contempt of court is several centuries old. In England, it meant to protect the judicial power of the king, and later by a panel of judges who acted in his name. Violation of the judges’ orders was considered an affront to the king himself. Over time, any kind of disobedience to judges, or obstruction of the implementation of their directives, or comments and actions that showed disrespect towards them
There were pre-Independence laws of contempt in India. Besides the early High Courts, the courts of some princely states also had such laws. When the Constitution was adopted, contempt of court was made one of the restrictions on freedom of speech and expression. Art 129 of the Constitution conferred on the Supreme Court the power to punish contempt of itself. Art 215 conferred a corresponding power on the High Courts
The Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, gives statutory backing to the idea.

Civil contempt is fairly simple. It is committed when someone wilfully disobeys a court order, or wilfully breaches an undertaking given to court.
Criminal contempt is complex. It consists of 3 forms:

(a) Words, written or spoken, signs and actions that “scandalise” or “tend to scandalise” or “lower” or “tends to lower” the authority of any court

(b) Prejudices or interferes with any judicial proceeding and

(c) Interferes with or obstructs the administration of justice. Making allegations against the judiciary or individual judges, attributing motives to judgments and judicial functioning and any scurrilous attack on the conduct of judges are normally considered matters that scandalise the judiciary.

The rationale for this provision is that courts must be protected from tendentious attacks that lower its authority, defame its public image and make the public lose faith in its impartiality. The punishment for contempt of court is simple imprisonment for a term up to six months and/or a fine of up to ₹. 2,000
Fair & accurate reporting of judicial proceedings will not amount to contempt of court. Nor is any fair criticism on the merits of a judicial order after a case is heard and disposed of. Instead of taking up matters of absolute urgency in these peculiar times, the Supreme Court chose to take issue of tweets assuming amounting to contempt of the court . U.K. Law Commission in a 2012 report recommending the abolition of the law of contempt said that the law was originally intended to maintain a “blaze of glory” around courts. Suo motu powers of the Court to initiate the criminal contempt proceedings served to complicate matters – truth and good faith were not recognised as valid defences until 2006. Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer famously termed the law of contempt as having a vague and wandering jurisdiction, with uncertain boundaries law for criminal contempt is completely asynchronous with our democratic system which recognises freedom of speech and expression as a fundamental right.

Excessively loose use of the test of ‘loss of public confidence’, combined with a liberal exercise of suo motu powers, can be dangerous. Canada ties its test for contempt to real, substantial and immediate dangers to the administration. American courts also no longer use the law of contempt in response to comments on judges or legal matters. In the landmark U.S. case of Bridges v. California (1941), court said “an enforced silence would probably engender resentment, suspicion, and contempt for the bench, not the respect it seeks”