The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a petition by the Telangana unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) challenging the State High Court’s order quashing a defamation case filed by its General Secretary against Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy for allegedly creating a “fake and dubious political narrative” during the 2024 Lok Sabha election that the BJP, if voted to power, would end reservations.
Dismissing the petition by the General Secretary of the Telangana BJP, a Bench of Chief Justice B R Gavai, Justice K Vinod Chandran, and Justice Atul S Chandurkar cautioned the party against using courts for advancing the political battles.
The Bench further said that a politician should be thick-skinned to bear criticism.
“We have been, time and again, saying that don’t use the Court for political battles. Dismissed. If you are a politician, you should have a strong skin to bear all these things,” the Court said while dismissing the plea.
The Telangana BJP, through its general secretary, had filed the defamation case alleging that Reddy connived with the Congress party “to develop a fake and dubious political narrative” that the BJP will end reservations.
The trial court in August 2024 issued notice to Reddy, holding that a prima facie case was made against him. The Congress leader then moved the High Court, which allowed his plea and quashed the proceedings last month.
Justice K Lakshman, in the ruling on August 1, said Reddy, in the speech, had alluded to the national BJP and no reference was made to its Telangana unit.
“It is not in dispute that Bharatiya Janata Party (Telangana) represented by its State General Secretary, Mr. Kasam Venkateshwarlu, has filed the complaint in its independent capacity. However, as the alleged defamatory speech was directed towards the national unit or the Bharatiya Janata Party, the complainant herein is not directly defamed or aggrieved,” the single judge had said.
Even if this Court were to accept that the complainant is a part of the national unit of the BJP and may be treated as a member of the party, the complaint is not maintainable for the lack of authorisation, the High Court had said.
This is not the first time that CJI B R Gavai cautioned against the use of courts for political purposes. In July 2025, in the MUDA case in Karnataka, while dealing with ED action involving Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s wife, CJI Gavai had said, “Let political battles be fought before the electorate. Why are you (ED) being used?” He warned agencies not to become instruments of political battles.
In another matter in July 2025, CJI had observed, “Don’t try to politicise before the court; your political battle, you should fight somewhere else.”
Similarly, in August 2025, in a DMK-AIADMK dispute relating to the use of the name and photograph of the Chief Minister M.K. Stalin in the promotion of a welfare scheme, while setting aside a High Court order, the CJI bench had said, “The Court cannot be used as a means to fight political battles by political parties.” In this case, the top court had imposed a cost of Rs. 10 lakhs on the AIADMK Member of Parliament C. V. Shanmugam, who had filed the original petition before the High Court.
Across these cases, Chief Justice Gavai has consistently underlined that political disputes should be fought in the electoral arena, not in courtrooms, reinforcing the judiciary’s stance against being drawn into partisan conflicts.