Project Topic; Freedom of speech and expression of a company

Introduction
A corporation is a legal/person entity and has its separate personality different from its
shareholders. And it has been established by myriad cases that a company, incorporated in
Companies Act, can’t be regarded as citizen. The provision of The Citizenship Act itself
excludes corporation from the definition of citizen. In the case of State Trading Corporation
of India, Ltd. v. CTO, the apex court has held that only a natural person can be a citizen, not a
juristic person. So a company is included in person but it is not a citizen. Our constitution
contains provisions related to fundamental rights and some of them are available to citizen
and some are to persons regardless of whether they are citizen are not.

Article 19(1) (a) talks about freedom of speech and expression and this fundamental right can
only benefit the citizens not a non-citizen. So according to our constitution a company
doesn’t have freedom of speech and same was held in Indo-China Steam Navigation Co. Ltd.
v. Jasjit Singh, Star India P. Ltd. v. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Vijay Rosin v.
Union of India,State Trading Corporation of India, Ltd. v. CTOand many other cases.

Contention
It can be argued that an incorporated company, therefore, can come up to this court for
enforcement of its fundamental rights, which are available to persons not to citizens, and so
may the individual shareholders to enforce their own; but it would not be open to an
individual shareholder to complain of an Act/act which affects the fundamental rights of the
company, which are only available to the citizen. But what about a situation in which
fundamental right of a corporation is violated and that violation, in consequence, affects the
fundamental right of the individual/member of that company i.e. news agency (freedom of
speech and expression). So, whether a person can approach the court to enforce the
fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression, which are available to citizens
only, of the company which will, in consequence, be enforcement of his right? Court in
Chiranjit Lal Chowdhuri v. Union of India observed that “The fundamental rights
guaranteed by the Constitution are available not merely to individual citizens but to
corporate bodies as well except where the language of the provision or the nature of the right
compels the inference that they are applicable only to natural persons. An incorporated
company, therefore, can come up to this court for enforcement of its fundamental rights and
so may the individual shareholders to enforce their own; but it would not be open to an
individual shareholder to complain of an Act which affects the fundamental rights of the
company except to the extent that it constitutes an infraction of his own rights as well.”