Courts should follow their own rules to ensure that public interest litigation (PILs) do not become ‘political interest litigation’, the Congress said on Friday.
The party’s assertion came soon after a Bench of the Delhi High Court issued a notice to the Centre and the Delhi government on a petition seeking FIRs against Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and party leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra among others.
“Notice is not automatic and should never be automatic in PILs. Do you know who has filed this petition?” asked Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi at a press conference and alleged that the petitioner was a former Advocate General of Madhya Pradesh during the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led government.
The Congress spokesperson, who is also a senior Advocate of the Supreme Court, said his party would question the maintainability of such a petition.
“When we move the High Court, we will ask the court how was a notice issued in the first place? These are all important questions. We will give a very comprehensive, strong and befitting reply but let me tell you that the whole world is receiving FIRs but the whole doesn’t include the great Mr Kapil Mishra, the great and only Mr. Anurag Thakur, Mr. Parvesh Verma. Not even an FIR after months,” Mr. Singhvi said. Mr Mishra, Mr Thakur and Mr Verma are BJP lawmakers who made provocative speeches during the campaign for the Delhi Assembly elections earlier this month.
The Congress leader said even though 39 people had died in the Delhi riots, no FIR has been registered against the BJP leaders who made hate speeches.
“The Election Commission has not taken notice, the National Human Rights Commission has not taken any notice, agencies are sleeping but when the division bench of Delhi High Court the day before yesterday asks the question, a judge is transferred under a remarkable order,” Mr. Singhvi said.
The Congress also responded to Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s comments that the party should not teach them raj dharma (duty of rulers) as Congress’s own history is full of twists and turns like starting the national population register (NPR) earlier but now opposing it.
Reacting to Mr Prasad’s reported comments that violence in north-east Delhi was instigated by speeches of Opposition leaders, Mr Singhvi said, “I would like him to arrest all of us including those sitting on this podium because we are speaking peacefully in a democratic country against what we believe is a wrong move. I am saying it right now and daring anyone to arrest me.”
“National Register of Citizens is a wrong. If you think that is sedition, if you think that is anti-national, if you think that is provocation and incitement, then I think it is a matter of shame. It’s a shame if we have to live in a country where this free speech without violence, peaceful protest is so treated,” the Congress leader said.
