Court case(1972) 2 SCC 788

Under the Import Control Order and the Newsprint Control Order the Central Government rationed imported newsprint. The Newsprint Policy for 1972-73 fixed a maximum of ten pages for newspapers, barred common-ownership units from starting new editions or papers, prohibited interchange of newsprint quota between papers of the same owner, and allowed an increase in pages only within strict limits. The publishers of The Times of India and other papers challenged the policy under Article 32.

Ray J, for the majority, struck down the impugned provisions. The test of infringement is the direct and inevitable effect of the law on the right, not its object or subject matter; a newsprint policy that dictates page limits controls the content and circulation of a newspaper and is a restriction on Article 19(1)(a). Freedom of the press is both quantitative and qualitative: it lies in circulation and in content. The government may ration newsprint but may not, under the guise of rationing, control the number of pages or forbid new editions; that is not a reasonable restriction within Article 19(2). The Court also held that shareholders and editors could invoke their own freedom of speech through the company. Mathew J dissented, viewing the policy as a legitimate allocation of a scarce resource that promoted the press freedom of smaller papers.