Balli outside the court. Picture by Prem Singh

New Delhi, April 10: A Delhi MLA was sent to jail today after brazenly confessing he had broken open seals put in place on the Supreme Court’s orders because he thought the directive was unfair to the people, whose representative he was.

“I broke 22 seals at Raja Garden because I am the people’s representative and owed a duty to them. Your order was against the people,” Harcharan Singh Balli told the apex court, adding he was ready for any punishment.

The judges took a dim view of the BJP legislator’s defiance and sentenced him to three months in jail for contempt of court.

“Mr Balli says he was conscious of the order. He broke open the seal as a people’s representative as he owed a duty to them. We don’t find any substance in it. We don’t expect that a people’s representative should act in such a brazen manner,” the three-judge bench said, convicting the MLA.

Unfazed, Balli asked if he should surrender and was told the law would take its own course. Soon after he returned home to Harinagar, the former minister was arrested.

The bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat, C.K. Thakker and L.S. Panta had issued a notice to the MLA on a complaint by the monitoring committee it had appointed to oversee the sealing of unauthorised buildings in the capital.

The committee said he went to Tilak Nagar and broke open locks of premises sealed by the municipal corporation on the court’s orders.

Balli was anything but repentant when he appeared in the packed courtroom today. He said he had not broken open any seals at Tilak Nagar, as the petition said, but that he had done so in Raja Garden. The MLA also said he was sent to 15 days in judicial custody on the false complaint.

“The court should order a CBI inquiry into the false complaint foisted against me and also award compensation for keeping me under detention on a wrong charge,” he argued.

The court directed the amicus curiae to file a report within three weeks.

Before the BJP legislator left the court, he made sure the media knew of his “small sacrifice” for the people of Delhi. “I have no repentance in going to jail,” he said.

The “sacrifice” will come handy in the Assembly elections, due early next year, which the BJP is hoping to win, especially after its sweep of the municipal polls last week.

Before convicting the MLA today, the bench ordered the Delhi police commissioner and area officers concerned to appear before it tomorrow.

“Nowadays people think that the Supreme Court is an unimportant institution in the country,’’ the bench said, taking exception to the police counsel’s argument that sealing was not so important a matter “that the police commissioner should appear”.

The monitoring committee had told the court that sealing could not take place on March 3, 4 and 9 because of non-cooperation by the police and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.

The MCD said it did not have adequate police force to go ahead with the sealing.