STATE TIMES NEWS
New Delhi: Observing that politicians do not have “higher immunity”, the Supreme Court Wednesday refused to entertain a plea by 14 political parties led by the Congress alleging arbitrary use of central probe agencies against opposition leaders, asserting that laying down guidelines without facts of a criminal case will be a “very dangerous” proposition.
A bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justice J B Pardiwala expressed disinclination to entertain the petition, saying courts are always there for taking up the grievances of political leaders as they do for common citizens.
“I think that in the absence of the specific fact, for us to lay down the general principle of law is again a very dangerous proposition. Once we have the facts in a case or group of cases then we can lay down law not just for that case but as a general principle,” said the CJI while refusing to entertain the plea.
“The difficulty in your petition is that you are trying to extrapolate the statistics into binding legal guidelines which effectively would apply. You are aware of the fact these statistics pertain only to politicians. At the same time you are aware of the fact that the guidelines cannot apply only to the politicians. Politicians do not have higher immunity,” the bench said.
Sensing its disinclination, senior advocate A M Sighvi, appearing for the political parties, sought permission to withdraw the petition which was granted.
“Learned counsel seeks permission to withdraw the plea at this stage. The petition is accordingly dismissed as withdrawn,” the bench ordered.
The bench said it is always willing to take up “a single case or a group of cases” where a political leader has been targeted to silence the voice.
“Come to us with one or more cases together we will certainly deal with this,” the bench said.
It said the remedy to the allegation that the space for political opponents has shrunk lies in the “political space” itself and not in courts.
The top court was not in agreement with the submission that in cases which do not relate to bodily injuries and provide for a sentence of not more than seven years pre and post-arrest guidelines needed to be framed.
For arrest and remand, the political parties have been seeking adherence to the triple test which deals with the “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”.
At the outset, Singhvi referred to certain statistics while trying to drive home the point that opposition leaders have been targeted by federal investigative agencies from 2014 to 2022 and that there has been a 600 per cent increase in CBI and ED cases.
“Between 2014 and 2022, 121 political leaders have been probed by the Enforcement Directorate out of whom 95 per cent are from opposition parties,” he claimed.
The Narendra Modi government first came to power in May 2014.
The CBI has probed 124 political leaders and out of these, 108 are from opposition political parties, Singhvi claimed.
The bench observed, by and large, the conviction rate in India is “abysmally low” and asked whether it can say there should not be any investigation keeping in mind the statistics.
“Your statistics are there and there is no question with that…this is the petition filed by 14 political parties. Now you give us some statistics and can we therefore say that because of these statistics there should be no investigation and there should be immunity from the investigation,” the bench observed.
It then referred to the principle of equality and gave an example of press freedom, while asserting the fundamental right is equal for all.
“Ultimately even the press has no higher freedom than what is available to a common citizen under Article 19 (1) (a) (freedom of speech and expression) of the Constitution. A political leader is also basically a citizen and therefore as citizens we all are amenable to the same law,” it said.
The court said as the parties have conceded that political leaders do not enjoy immunity like other citizens, it cannot pass general directions.