In a big setback to Aam Aadmi Party, the Supreme Court has refused to give a hearing to the plea of AAP Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh after the top court found that the earlier statements made by Sanjay Singh against judiciary were derogatory.
According to reports, the Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi along with Justice SK Kaul and Justice KM Joseph were hearing plea pertaining to the review petitions in connection with Rafale deal. While hearing the plea, the CJI took objection to certain statements made by AAP MP Sanjay Singh and refused to hear his appeal.
Chief Justice Gogoi informed Advocate Sanjay Hegde, the counsel of Sanjay Singh that the top Court has taken serious note of his comments against the judiciary and will initiate action against Sanjay Singh. “We will take actions against you after completion of these hearings and after giving you an opportunity to explain,” said CJI.
Sanjay Singh had questioned the neutrality of the Supreme Court after its split verdict on power-sharing in Delhi. Criticising the Supreme court judgment, Singh had tweeted in Hindi, “Does the Supreme Court not pronounce verdicts against the interests of Modiji? The central government lied in the court on corruption in Rafale (deal), but SC was silent. Did the SC give a verdict on CBI or was it a joke? Played with the emotion of crores of people of Delhi. Is this the Supreme Court or local court of Tehsil?”
In a separate tweet, he had criticised, “Has the Supreme Court lost its dignity? Delay in justice is not justice. The people consider a judge a God, but even God is unable to give justice.”
After Supreme Court had given a clean chit to the Narendra Modi government with regards to Rafale deal, Sanjay Singh had sought an open-court hearing on his review plea and initiation of contempt proceedings against persons those responsible for allegedly misleading the court on sharing of the price of the jet.
“The court was purposefully misled and made to believe, in order to establish the bonafide of the Respondent (Defence Ministry) before this Court, about the sharing of pricing details with the CAG and also the purported CAG report to the PAC, which are factually incorrect and all the respective officials have vehemently denied about such sharing of price,” he had said.
The Supreme Court is a hearing a batch of review petitions seeking a probe in the Rafale deal. While presenting his arguments, controversial lawyer Prashant Bhushan had alleged that there were several serious errors in documents provided by the government on which the court depended while passing the judgment rejecting the petitions in the deal earlier. As proof for his argument, Prashant Bhushan wanted to present an eight-page note, but Attorney General KK Venugopal strongly objected to that.
KK Venugopal had alleged that the files were stolen from the defense ministry, and a probe is being done on the matter. The Attorney General further has added that the presentation of the notes is a violation of the Official Secrets Act, and the government is going to take action against the newspapers that have published the defence ministry notes.
