First decide on plea’s maintainability, SC directs J’khand HC
The Supreme Court on Tuesday restrained the Jharkhand high court from considering pleas for investigations by central agencies into the mining lease purportedly granted by chief minister Hemant Soren to himself, and into some shell companies allegedly operated by his family members and associates, without first deciding whether the cases should be entertained as public interest litigations (PILs) or not.
A bench of justices Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud and Bela M Trivedi directed the high court to examine the issue of maintainability of the PILs upfront on the next date of hearing before examining the request for probes by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into the alleged illegalities.
“Since the high court has clearly stated on May 13 that it would deal with the issue of maintainability of the petition upfront, it would be appropriate if the high court first decides the said issue...,” the court said. The high court is expected to hear the matter on Saturday.
The top court order will give Soren some breathing time, for the Jharkhand high court has been hearing the PILs on merits, without examining the requests made by the state government as well as Soren that the petition should be dismissed right away on the ground of concealment of relevant information and being a motivated plea against the Soren family.
The state government and Soren have flagged that the PIL petitioner, Shiv Shankar Sharma, did not divulge that his father testified against the chief minister’s father Shibu Soren in a murder case in 2006, in which Shibu was eventually acquitted.
Appearing before the Supreme Court on behalf of the state and Soren respectively, advocates Kapil Sibal and Mukul Rohatgi said on Tuesday that the high court chose to gloss over the fact
that the PILs are not maintainable under the Jharkhand high court PIL rules, and that they ought to be rejected straight away.
Sibal, representing the state, rued that the high court opted to look into a sealed cover envelope handed over by ED despite their objections. Following the perusal of ED’s report adduced confidentially, the high court on May 19 observed that the case was of “paramount importance, urgency”.
Taking umbrage at the high court’s acceptance of the report, Sibal contended: “The first question is, can some extraneous matter in an unrelated matter be brought to the court and should the court look into it?” He added that the high court cannot entertain a PIL for a CBI probe when there is no FIR in the matter.
Arguing for the chief minister, Rohatgi said that the Supreme Court has repeatedly frowned upon “sealed cover jurisprudence” and that the high court erred in not entertaining his objections to the credibility of the petitioner.
Responding on behalf of the Union ministry of corporate affairs, CBI and ED, solicitor general Tushar Mehta emphasised that there were three different petitions taken up by the high court since they were all interlinked.
“The material is very serious and authentic,” Mehta asserted. “There is a money trail.”
The bench, however, said: “However serious the violations are, the high court has itself said that it would first hear the issue of maintainability.” “And that will not foreclose ED from exercising its power to investigate under the law,” it added.