The Kerala government has moved the Supreme Court challenging a High Court dismissal of a prosecutor’s request to withdraw a case of criminal trespass, mischief and destruction of public property involving Education Minister V. Sivankutty and others who created a ruckus on the Assembly floor during a budget presentation in 2015.
The televised images showed MLAs coming to blows on the House floor and hurling chairs, computers and other public property soon after Finance Minister K.M. Mani began his budget speech during the UDF government’s tenure.
The State argued that the legislators’ actions were protected from legal action by parliamentary privilege.
“When the act of the accused persons was in relation to their function to protest as Members of the Legislative Assembly, are they not entitled to get protection?” the State asked the apex court.
The Assembly Secretary should not have complained against the MLAs to the police without taking the prior sanction of the Speaker, the government argued. Besides offences under the IPC, the legislators were booked under the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act.
The Public Prosecutor’s application to withdraw the cases was dismissed by the Thiruvananthapuram Chief Judicial Magistrate on September 22, last year. The Magistrate had concluded that the request was made “without good faith and under external influence”. The High Court confirmed the Magistrate’s decision in March.
A Bench led by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud is scheduled to hear the petition on June 29. UDF leader Ramesh Chennithala has filed a caveat in the case.
In its appeal, the State government, represented by advocate G. Prakash, said a Magistrate’s role is limited when the Prosecutor seeks withdrawal of the case under Section 321 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. All the Magistrate needs to examine is whether the Prosecutor has applied his mind “independently and properly”.
The reason for the Prosecutor’s decision to seek withdrawal of a case need not be confined to paucity of evidence alone. It could also depend on “other relevant grounds as well as to further broaden the ends of public justice, public order and peace is the settled law”.
“The broad ends of public justice will certainly include appropriate social, economic and political purposes,” the State argued in its special leave petition before the Supreme Court.
The State also argued that it should be left to the House to decide whether it would want to exercise its jurisdiction or hand over the ‘offenders’ to the criminal courts.
