The Secretary, Ministry Of ... vs Cricket Association Of Bengal & ... on 9 February, 1995 prior restraints, regardless of their form, are frowned upon as threats to freedom of expression since they contain within themselves forces which if released have the potential of imposing arbitraryand at times direct conflict with the right of another citizen. Censorship by prior restraint, therefore, seems justified for the protec- tion of the society from the ill-effects that a motion picture may produce if unrestricted exhibition is allowed. Censorship is thus permitted to protect social interests enumerated in Article 19 [2] and Section 5-B of the Cinema to graph Act. For this reason, need for prior restraint has been recognised and our laws have assigned a specific role to the censors, as such is the need in a rapidly changing societal structure. But since permissible restrictions, albeit reasonable, are all the same restrictions, they are bound to be viewed as anathema, in that, they are in the nature of curbs or limitations on the exercise of the right and are, therefore, bound to be viewed with suspicion, thereby throwing a heavy burden on the authorities that seek to impose them to show that the restrictions are reasonable and permissible in law. Such censorship must be reasonable and must answer the test of Article 14. 22. In this connection, it will be interesting also to know the content of the right to freedom of speech and expression under the First Amendment to the American Constitution where the freedom of press is exclusively mentioned as a part of the said right unlike in Article 19 [1] (a) of our Constitution. Further, the restrictions on the right are not spelt out as in our Constitution under Article 19 [2]. But the U.S. Supreme court has been reading some of them as implicit in the right. In principle, they make no difference to the content of the right to the freedom of speech and expression under our Constitution. 23. In National Broadcasting Company v. United States of America [319 US 190238 : 87 L ed 1344], it was held, inter alia, that the wisdom of regulations adopted by the Federal Communications Commission is not a matter for the courts, whose duty is at an end when they find that the action of the Commission was based upon findings supported by evidence, and was made pursuant to authority granted by Congress. 24. In Joseph Burstyn v Lewis A. Wilson [343 US 495: 96 L ed 1098] a licence granted for the exhibition of a motion picture was rescinded by the appropriate New York authorities -on the ground that the picture was "sacrilegious" within the meaning of a statute requiring the denial of a licence if a film was "sacrilegious". The statute was upheld by the State courts. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the decision of the State courts. Disapproving a contrary theory expressed in Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Com. of Ohio [236 US 230: 59 L ed 442], six members of the Supreme Court in an opinion of Clerk, J. held that the basic principles of freedom of speech and press applied to motion pictures, even though their production, distribution, and exhibition is a large-scale business conducted for profit. The court recognised that motion pictures are not necessarily subject to the precise rules governing any other particular method of expression, but found it not necessary to decide whether a State may censor motion pictures under a clearly drawn statute, and limited its decision to the holding that the constitutional guarantee of free speech and press prevents a state from banning a film on the basis of a censor's conclusion that it is " sacrilegious". Reed, J. in a concurrent opinion emphasised that the question as to whether a state may establish a system for the licensing of motion pictures was not foreclosed by the court's opinion. Frankfurter, J. with Jackson and Burton, JJ. held that the term "sacrilegious" as used in the statute Indian Kanoon - http://indiankanoon.org/doc/539407/ 14