VIJAY DEO JHA
Ranchi, May 19: The Jharkhand High Court has deferred the hearing of the bunch of petitions pertaining to shell companies, the mining lease of Chief Minister Hemant Soren and the MGNREGA scam till Tuesday after senior lawyer Kapil Sibal informed the court that the Jharkhand government has filed a petition at the Supreme Court against the order passed by Jharkhand High Court a day before yesterday in these cases.
Kapil Sibal who appeared on behalf of the Jharkhand government and said that till the petition of the state government is heard and an order is passed by the Supreme Court the High Court should not pass any order.
The court was set to hear arguments on whether or not these cases should be handed over to the CBI for investigation.
After Kapil Sibal requested the court not to pass any order chief justice Dr. Ravi Ranjan said “the matter is urgent. After the perusal of the report submitted by the enforcement directorate, I have come to the conclusion that this is a matter of public interest. We will pass an order that you may challenge.”
Later on, Kapil Sibal said that the petition of the Jharkhand government is likely to be taken up tomorrow before the Supreme Court.
Upon this, the bench of Chief Justice Dr. Ravi Ranjan and Sujit Narayan Prasad conceded the demand and fixed the hearing on Saturday. But the advocate general Rajiv Ranjan said that the hearing should be deferred till Monday since Saturday is not a working day. The court agreed to this. But after a few minutes, Rajiv Ranjan again pleaded that the hearing should be fixed on Tuesday as Kapil Sibal will be in Jabalpur on Monday and he may not be able to join the hearing.
The Chief Justice told the advocate general that he should not pressurize the court this way. The court was apparently not happy with the statement made by Kapil Sibal that court proceedings were going in a strange way.
After the chief justice said that he has gone into the report of the Enforcement Directorate regarding shell companies and other related matters having a paramount public interest. On this Sibal said that the state was not provided with a copy of the ED report. He said that in such a condition he may not be able to assist the court and in such a situation the advocate general may argue on his own. Sibal said that the copy should be given to the opposite party to file the reply.
On this solicitor general, Tushar Mehta representing the ED referred to the case of P. Chidambaram and said that in cases like this, a document can’t be disclosed except to the court till the charge sheet is filed.
When the advocate general requested the court to defer the hearing till Tuesday due to the engagement of Sibal, the Chief Justice said: “Kapil Sibal has said that he will not assist the court so why do you want the hearing date to be extended.”
