Rahul Gandhi contempt date changed by CJI staff?

Rahul Gandhi contempt date changed by CJI staff?

FPJ BureauUpdated: Wednesday, May 29, 2019, 08:19 PM IST
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New Delhi: The staff of the Court No 1 of the Chief Justice of India seems to have recorded May 10 as the next date of hearing fixed by his Bench on April 30 in the contempt petition against Congress President Rahul Gandhi. The Supreme Court registry washed off its hands on the contempt case not coming up on Monday, noting that it has gone by the order it received from the CJI’s court. CJI Ranjan Gogoi was on Monday “little perplexed” over it getting delinked from the Rafale review petition and decided to hear the latter only on May 10 as per the Bench’s earlier decision to hear both together.

Though the two cases are altogether different, the Bench clubbed the contempt case with the review petition since Rahul had misquoted the court endorsing his daily slogan of “Chowkidar chor hai” against Prime Minister Modi in its order passed on April 10. This is not for the first time that the order of CJI’s court was tweaked as two staffers of the same court were sacked earlier this year after changes noticed in a case related to business honcho Anil Ambani.

The Bench of CJI and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph had passed a single order on April 30 on both the review petition and the contempt petition, but fixing different dates for the next hearing on May 6 and 10 respectively by the court staff Sushil Kumar Rakheja and Anand Prakash. The order on the criminal contempt petition of New Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi, an advocate herself, reads:

“After an extensive hearing, Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi, learned senior counsel for the respondent, seeks liberty to file an additional affidavit. While we observe that it will be open for the respondent to file the additional affidavit if he so desires, we make it clear that the admissibility and acceptance of any affidavit, if filed, will be considered on the next date fixed, i.e. 10.05.2019.”

Singhvi had told the court that Rahul will apologise to the court for wrongly quoting it on the Rafale issue as he does not want to bring the judiciary in disrepute in any manner. The CJI stated on Monday afternoon after checking with the registry that it has not yet received any affidavit of Rahul apologising to the court for his unwarranted remarks.

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