SC stays Gauhati HC verdict, CBI still constitutional

After the furore over the Gauhati High Court’s verdict declaring the Central Bureau of Investigation unconstitutional, the Supreme Court today stayed the court’s verdict. The matter was taken up for urgent hearing after the Centre appealed the High Court verdict. The hearing on the appeal was conducted at the residence of Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam. “There shall be a stay of operation of impugned judgement of 6 November, 2013 passed by Gauhati High Court”, the Supreme Court said in its order today. The court refused the preliminary objection that Department of Personnel and Training is not authorised to file appeal in the matter. It also observed that the judgement has to be stayed as the accused in two sensational cases have sought stay of the trial. “We will consider and go through the appeal filed by the Centre”, CJI P Sathasivam and Justice Ranjana Desai said. “We are concerned with all other CBI cases. Several persons were trying to take advantage of this verdict. It was important to move as fast as possible. We worked on it overnight,” Attorney General GE Vahanvati told reporters after the hearing. “We argued that the Gauhati High Court had asked the wrong questions, worked on the wrong premises and come to the wrong conclusion,” he added. Dedicated legislation does not apply in this case and the executive is empowered in this case to create the CBI, Vahanvati said. [caption id=“attachment_1220287” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  AFP[/caption] Vahanvati said that he had filed a Special Leave Petition on behalf of the Department of Personnel and Training and the court had issued notice to the petitioner in the high court. “The petitioner asked for time till 6 December to appeal, which has been granted,” Vahanvati said. The petitioner’s lawyer in the case however welcomed the fact that the apex court had stayed the execution of the judgement and given them the opportunity to respond in the case. “It is expedient that the matter be first examined and then the Supreme Court decide on the matter,” DS Chaudhary, the petitioner’s lawyer in the case, told CNN-IBN. He maintained, however, that the CBI was illegal under law. Stating that the Gauhati High Court erred in holding that the constitution of CBI was illegal, the Centre, in its petition, told the Supreme Court that the order passed by the Gauhati HC will have widespread ramifications. “Gauhati HC verdict would directly impact 9,000 trials and 1,000 investigations which are being done by CBI,” the Centre told the apex court. Meanwhile, a caveat has also been filed by Narendra Kumar, on whose petition the Gauhati high court ruling had come, that he be heard before any order is passed on the Centre’s plea. A division bench of Gauhati high court had struck down the resolution through which the CBI was set up and held all its actions as “unconstitutional”. The bench comprising justices IA Ansari and Indira Shah had passed the verdict on a writ petition filed by Kumar challenging an order by a single judge of the High Court in 2007 on the resolution through which CBI was set up. “We hereby…set aside and quash the impugned Resolution, dated 01.04.1963, whereby CBI has been constituted…. We do hold that the CBI is neither an organ nor a part of the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE) and the CBI cannot be treated as a ‘police force’ constituted under the DSPE Act, 1946,” the court had said. “Situated thus, the actions of the CBI, in registering a case, arresting a person as an offender, conducting search and seizure, prosecuting an accused, etc., offend Article 21 of the Constitution and are, therefore, liable to be struck down as unconstitutional,” the judgement said. It had further said the aforementioned Home Ministry resolution was “not the decision of the Union Cabinet nor were these executive instructions assented to by the President”. The high court had also said that as per the records the Resolution, in question, cannot even be termed as the decision of the Government of India. The bench had said the Union Home Ministry was working on the assumption that there is already provision in the Constitution for creation of the CBI. With PTI inputs