Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, May 22: The controversy with regard to cross-voting in the MLC election by the BJP MLAs has taken new turn with the Vigilance Commissioner submitting a status report before the Division Bench of High Court mentioning that violation of whip doesn’t come within the ambit of abuse of official position as envisaged under the J&K Prevention of Corruption Act. However, the Division Bench directed the Senior Additional Advocate General (Sr AAG) to ensure the availability of record of the Vigilance Organization on next date of hearing for the perusal of the Court to ascertain as to how the Vigilance Organization arrived at this conclusion.
When two Public Interests Litigations (PILs) filed by SOS International and Rattan Singh came up for hearing, Senior AAG Gagan Basotra submitted that Vigilance Commissioner has filed the status report as per the previous directions of the Court.
In the status report, Vigilance Commissioner has submitted that complaints were scrutinized and from his point of view casting votes contrary to party whip does not come within the ambit of abuse of official position as envisaged under J&K Prevention of Corruption Act 2006.
“The election to Legislative Council is guided and governed by Representation of Peoples Act and as per Section 102 of the Act, no person can be forced to reveal for whom he has voted and the election is strictly by secret ballot”, he said in the status report, adding “Section 132 of Representation of Peoples Act deals with corrupt practices during elections which is punishable under Section 171-E of RPC, which is non-cognizable offence. However, cognizance by courts in such offence is possible only upon complaint made by order of or under authority from the Government or District Magistrate or such other officer as may empowered by the Government in this behalf as envisaged under Section 196 CrPC”.
“The allegations in complaints are vague, wild and general in nature which do not disclose any instance of transaction; hence do not warrant initiation of verification/ enquiry in light of rule 3.5 (ii) J&K Vigilance Manual 2008”, the status report said.
On this, Advocate S S Ahmed appearing for the SOS International pointed out, “in view of the affidavit filed by Vigilance Commissioner this case now merits to be entrusted to Central Bureau of Investigation”.
However, the counsels appearing for the BJP MLAs— Advocates S K Shukla, Anil Khajuria and Harshwardan Gupta opposed the submission of counsel for the petitioner and justified the affidavit of Vigilance Commissioner. They sought time to respond to the petitions.
On this, DB allowed three weeks time to the counsels for the BJP MLAs to file response to the petition and to counsel for the SOS International to file response to the status report filed by the Vigilance Commissioner. The DB also issued directions to Senior AAG to keep the records of SVO in support of status report before this court on next date of hearing.
In another petition filed by Rattan Singh, the DB issued notice to Prof Chaman Lal Gupta, Ashok Khajuria, Durga Dass, Sukhnandan Choudhary, Prof Gharu Ram, Jugal Kishore Sharma, Baldev Raj Sharma, Bharat Bhushan, Jagdish Sapolia, Lal Chand and Sham Choudhary, Yash Pal Khajuria and Noor Hussain (MLCs).
Advocate Aditya Gupta appeared for the petition filed by Rattan Singh.
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