New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday, April 5, turned down the petition filed by 14 political parties which alleged that the Narendra Modi government was misusing central investigating agencies to harass opposition leaders and clamp down on dissent.
The parties filed the petition a day after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was convicted by a Surat court in a defamation case, and on the same day when he was disqualified as a Lok Sabha MP. The opposition parties had asked for protection against “arbitrary arrests” of political leaders which hampers the democratic process and governance.
LiveLaw has reported that a division bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice J.B. Pardiwala expressed doubts about the validity and feasibility of the petition, and said that it could not issue general directions in the matter. It said that it could have intervened in an individual case but issuing special guidelines for politicians would mean that they enjoy higher immunity than ordinary citizens.
The petitioning parties’ counsel, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, eventually sought to withdraw the petition.
As The Wire had reported before, the opposition’s petition claimed that central agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) have singled out opposition leaders in different cases, even as tainted BJP leaders have got off scot-free. The petition also said that once some of the leaders who were under scanner joined the BJP, cases against them were dropped or buried by the central agencies.
The Aam Aadmi Party, YSR Congress, Bharat Rashtra Samithi, Telugu Desam Party, Trinamool Congress, Shiv Sena, Janata Dal (United), Samajwadi Party, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Janata Dal (Secular), and the All India United Democratic Front had also joined parties in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, like Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Nationalist Congress Party, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Jammu and Kashmir National Conference in moving the apex court.
Arguing his case in court on Wednesday, Singhvi urged for proper guidelines for arrest and remand, including the application of the “triple test” – determination as to whether a person is a flight risk, whether there is a reasonable apprehension of the tampering of evidence, or the influencing/intimidation of witnesses – be followed.
Singhvi said that such conditions were seldom satisfied while targeting opposition leaders, and that the principle of “bail as rule, jail as exception” needs to be followed.
The petition also cited data to say that the action rate on raids had increased in spite of few convictions on the basis of the raids.
“Clearly there is a skewed application of CBI and ED jurisdiction,” Singhvi added.
“Are you saying that because of these statistics, there should be immunity from investigation?” CJI Chandrachud asked, according to LiveLaw.
“As citizens, politicians are all amenable to the same law. Political leaders can’t claim higher immunity,” he added.
“The problem with this petition is that you are trying to extrapolate statistics into guidelines, where the statistics only apply to politicians. But, we cannot have guidelines exclusively for politicians…Political leaders stand absolutely on the same standing as the citizens of the country. They do not claim a higher identity. How can there be a different set of procedure[s] for them?” Chief Justice Chandrachud added.
The CJI said the apex court cannot give abstract guidelines.
“Come back with one or more cases, where there has been a specific instance or instances of the agencies being used to selectively target leaders. On the basis of the law that we have laid down, we can evolve general principles with respect to the facts of the case,” he said, according to LiveLaw.
Soon after the SC rejected the plea, the AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi who wasn’t a party in the plea said that moving the court in the matter was a “wrong step”.
“This was a wrong step, not a correct way of doing politics when we are facing a formidable opponent like BJP led by Narendra Modi. Going to the Supreme Court was an unwise decision. Now, this has given BJP an opportunity to say that SC is supporting us,” he told the news agency ANI.