Delhi HC Dismisses AAP Leader's Plea Against PM Modi's Low Attendance In Parliament [Read Order]

Terming it a “directed invective against the Prime Minister”, the Delhi High Court has dismissed a plea moved by AAP leader Sanjay Singh wherein he had sought directions to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the Parliament regularly and respond to questions raised in the House.

A bench of Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal and Justice C Hari Shankar dismissed the petition calling it an “abuse of process of law”.

It is to be noted that Singh had moved the high court raising the issue of low attendance of the Prime Minister in the House.

His counsel Somnath Bharti had submitted in the court that he has apprehensions that various members of the legislature, including the Prime Minister, may not have attended requisite sittings of the Parliament and, therefore, sought a direction to the Speaker of the Assembly to produce the details of such sittings so that his client could ascertain whether there has, or has not, been violation of Article 101 (4) of the Constitution of India.

“No such prayer, as is obvious from the above, finds place in the writ petition,” the court noted.

“Needless to say the present writ petition cannot be a platform for initiating a roving and fishing enquiry into the sittings of legislators in Parliament. Neither do we find any material, in the writ petition, calling for issuance of any such direction to the Speaker. The presumption, of the petitioner, that there may have been violation of Article 101 (4) of the Constitution of India, hardly justifies such a prayer, or such a writ petition,” said the bench.

“The present petition is nothing but an abuse of the process of law and is ex facie, politically motivated. It has consumed valuable judicial time and effort, which could have been expended in adjudicating disputes which genuinely deserve a quietus. Such abuse of the judicial process deserves to be deprecated, and we do so,” it added.

The court, however, stopped short of imposing cost on the petition while adding, “Ordinarily, an attempt such as the present writ petition would deserve to be dismissed with heavy costs. However, as the petitioner claims to be a social worker, and as we are rejecting the petition in limine, we refrain from imposing any cost, warning the petitioner, and other such like-minded litigants, that adventurism of this nature may not always meet with such a lenient response”.

The instant petition closely follows the petition moved by rebel AAP leader Kapil Mishra seeking Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s attendance in the Assembly while alleging that he does not even have 50 per cent attendance.

Like Mishra, Singh had also sought direction to the President to ascertain feasibility of “No Work No Pay” for the MPs, if presence is less than 50 per cent in Assembly.

The bench, however, noted that there was no whisper of an averment in the writ petition justifying the prayer for issuance of the directions prayed for, apart from a generalized submission that legislators are required to attend the Parliament regularly.

“While this is true that maintenance of the democratic integrity of our nation requires the autonomy of the three pillars thereof, i.e., the legislature, executive and judiciary, survive in mutual harmony and respect, our democratic framework does not contemplate the judiciary to act as the head master of the legislature or the legislators forming the body politic thereof or to police its actions,” it said.