New Delhi: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), a staunch ally of the BJP in Punjab, will finally contest the ensuing Lok Sabha polls without any legal hassles as a Sikh religious entity.
The sigh of relief came for the SAD when the Delhi high court on Wednesday adjourned the hearing of a petition to July 22 – after the elections are over.
The petition challenged the Akali party’s dual face as a secular entity – which is mandatory to contest the parliamentary or the assembly elections – and as a Sikh religious organisation that prevails over the management of gurdwaras.
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The long pending case, filed in 2010, came up for an “expeditious hearing” on Tuesday in the court of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani, with the chief justice pronouncing the adjournment to be heard “after the (court’s) vacations”.
Punjab goes to the polls on May 19.
Legal tangles
The previous order, dated February 19, 2019, by the same double bench had observed: “An application has been filed (by the petitioner) seeking the expeditious hearing of the matter in view of the ensuing elections that may be announced shortly. That apart, the petitioners are senior citizens and wish that the petition should be heard during their lifetime”.
The petitioner, 85-year-old Balwant Singh Kheraan is a socialist party activist.
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The incumbent chief justice’s predecessor, G. Rohini, in this case had even once pronounced to keep the orders reserved over three years back (on November 5, 2015) and then suddenly recused herself from the case five months later on April 5, 2016.
“The hearing was on a war-footing in 2015, before the then chief justice G. Rohini recused herself all of a sudden after keeping the order reserved for five months,” Indira Unninayar, the petitioner’s counsel, told The Wire.
The EC’s silence
The Election Commission of India, in its replay as respondent no. 1 in the said case, had stated: “The registration of a political party by the commission is a quasi-judicial function of the commission”.
The ECI counter affidavit filed in the high court in February this year further stated: “The commission is not touching upon the merits of the present petition as the orders of the quasi judicial authorities, when questioned before courts, are not defended by the said authorities but by the parties before the authority”.
The Directorate of Gurdwara Elections under the Union home ministry, as one of the respondents in the case, has already acknowledged the SAD as a Sikh religious body.