Two separate Supreme Court benches on Tuesday admonished the Bengal government for the controversy-ridden SIR process in the state and its objection to the Enforcement Directorate’s plea against the alleged obstruction to a raid in Calcutta on January 8.
Dealing with grievances pertaining to the alleged large-scale exclusion of voters in the state, a bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi orally observed that the SIR had been conducted smoothly in all states, except Bengal.
“Except West Bengal, everywhere SIR has happened smoothly... Not much of litigation on SIR is coming from other states,” CJI Kant told senior advocate Shyam Divan, representing the Bengal government.
The bench noted that it had already appointed judicial officers to deal with issues raised by the petitioners and created a special tribunal to hear appeals against the exclusion of voters.
Senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee said the entire supplementary list of voters was still not available and pleaded that the Election Commission (EC) be directed to provide soft copies to all political parties. “This burden we have passed onto the Chief Justice of the (Calcutta) High Court,” the CJI said.
Senior advocate D. Seshadri Naidu, appearing for the poll panel, said the EC had already given a proposal on the publication of supplementary lists on a daily basis to the high court Chief Justice.
Another bench comprising Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and N.V. Anjaria questioned the state’s opposition to the ED petition for registration of criminal cases against chief minister Mamata Banerjee and the state police brass over the alleged obstruction to the agency’s raid on the premises linked to I-PAC, the Trinamool Congress’s poll strategist. The ED said the raid was in connection with a money-laundering probe.
“If the chief minister barges into an ED investigation, your idea of remedy for the ED is to go to the state government, which is headed by the chief minister and inform them about it and seek remedy?” Justice Mishra asked senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the state.
“Your lordships are assuming that the chief minister has committed an offence,” Sibal said, prompting Justice Mishra to say: “We are not assuming anything. Every allegation is based on some facts. If there are no facts, there is no need to investigate. That is what they are praying for CBI to investigate.”
Sibal argued that if the ED was investigating a PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) case and some other offence had come to the notice of the officers, the agency should have informed the state government under Section 66 of PMLA.
Justice Mishra refused to accept the argument.
“Section 66 PMLA may not apply. There are two distinct allegations. PMLA allegations which ED is inquiring about. Then the second set of offence, which the petitioners herein are alleging that has notbeen committed in continuation of or while the investigation of PMLA offence was undergoing. There are two distinct offences. While PMLA investigations are going on…The present offences are committed by some other persons against PMLA investigators,” he said.
Even then, Sibal argued, the ED was not empowered to move the apex court under Article 32 of the Constitution, which deals with the enforcement of fundamental rights of citizens, as the central probe agency was not a “citizen”. Instead, the ED should have moved a petition under Article 131, which empowers the top court to deal with disputes between the Centre and the states or between states,Sibal added.
The bench noted that besides the ED, some individual officers had also moved the top court, alleging that theywere subjected to intimidation and their fundamental rights were violated.
“Please concentrate on the fundamental rights of the officers of the ED with whom the offence has been committed. If you only concentrate on ED, ED and ED and forget the second, which is preferred by the individual officers who were the victims of that offence, you may miss the point and you will be in difficulty,” Justice Mishra said.
