filHAR ^RBSS BILL 49 press censorship laws and the Maintenance of Internal Security Act. Under the latter, any person could be detained without trial and under the former it was forbidden, among other things, to write about it. The press censorship laws consisted of the imposition of pre-censor-ship and censorship guidelines from the very first day of the Emergency, followed by the promulgation of an Ordinance meant to institutionalise the guidelines, which was later enacted as the Prevention of Publication of Objectionable Matters Act in 1976. Under the Act, editors and publishers were expected themselves to practise a form of self-censorship in accordance with the provisions of the Act. Pre-censor-ship formed an adjunct to the earlier guidelines and to the later Act inasmuch as when a doubt existed as to whether the provisions of the Act were being transgressed or not, it was incumbent on the editor or publisher to submit such matter to the censor for approval or rejection. Of course, in certain cases the question of following this practice did not arise at all, because the censor officer would physically sit in the newspaper office virtually vetting all the matter intended for publication. Transgression of the provisions of the Act beyond a certain point would bring swift and sure imprisonment and none dared then to break this law. The Prevention of Publication of Objectionable Matters Act, moreover, had also at the time of its enactment been placed in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution so that it was put beyond the pale of challenge in any court. It was only with the coming to power of the Janata government in 1977 that this obnoxious law was finally repealed. It was only 11 years after the enactment of the Tamil Nadu law, when the AIADMK government of M G Ramachandran effected an amendment to it in 1981 to increase the punishment under Section 292-A as also to make the offence cognizable and non-bailable, that public attention was, for the first time, focussed on the existing statutes to curb the press. The only motive that the ruling party in Tamil Nadu had for amending the Act to make it more stringent was to deal effectively with political opponents.3 The Act is now under challenge in the Supreme Court, but it provided the inspiration and justification for the Bihar Press Bill by the Jagannath Mishra government in Bihar. Implications of the Bihar Bill The Bihar Press Bill has come to be known as such in popular parlance although its real title is The Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure (Bihar Amendment) Bill 1982. This Bill has amended Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code so as to insert a fresh "Section 292-A" by which a new offence—scurrilous writing—has been created in the State of Bihar. The Bill has also amended Section 455(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure to make the new offence both cognizable and non-bailable in Bihar against which any magistrate, executive (which includes police) or judicial, can initiate action. The