PMLA Judgment Reconsideration : Live Updates From Supreme Court [Day 2]

Singhvi: Second thing, sometimes, when you are released on bail in the predicate offence, you are arrested under PMLA the very next day. Can you circumvent default bail threshold like this? By extending it indefinitely by a new offence.

Singhvi: ...Two offences, two bail provisions, two arrests, two continuations of arrest.

SG Mehta (interjecting): We had answered this. Piracy, for example....

Khanna J: Mr Mehta, piracy generated money may be more. But threshold is one crore. There's a difficulty in that. Second, sometimes generation of money is an original crime, for example S 420.

Singhvi: Some days, Your Lordships will have to consider this. It is a common, and in fact, the axiomatic practice that a person is named in an FIR, nothing happens. Much later, you are arrested under PMLA.

Bench assembles after lunch.

Singhvi: Take a look at a chart of some of the offences in the schedule. IPC Section 259, 260, etc...All bailable, most of them non-cognizable. Take for example, Section 259. Offence under the section is having possession of govt counterfeit stamp. Under IPC, I'll get bail, but under PMLA, there's a bar to bail. 

Singhvi: You can pass the appropriate law with the appropriate language; second, put it in ninth schedule; third, Art 31B, 31C, but these have not been done. There is not even an attempt to touch the basis, forget removal.

Khanna J: Fact is, legislature reenacted the law. Statement of objects and reasons have not specified. But the reason, what they probably felt, was to do away with the lacuna pointed out by the court, rightly or wrongly...

Singhvi: But isn't it deserving of consideration? Have you shown anything to this court or the Vijay Madanlal bench that you have done anything to address the lacuna?

Singhvi: 60 years of jurisprudence - Jaini, Manipur, and now a constitution bench, all that has been dismissed in one word - 'contextual'.

Reads from Vijay Madanlal Choudhary (2022)

Singhvi: Let's now turn to Vijay Madanlal. Does it not cry out for reference on this ground alone? Vijay Madanlal incorrectly answers that the law was not obliterated, and accordingly, upholds these three words.

Singhvi takes the court through the 2018 amendment -

"I'm not making sarcastic comments about pithiness or brevity. These three words can never take away by basis of judgment. This content...not enough to take away the basis. This is a revival by a procedure unknown to law."

Singhvi reads out from Mahendra Lal Jaini v. State of Uttar Pradesh (1962) in support of his contention regarding the impact of striking down on post-constitution laws.

Singhvi: I'm on the anterior stage. Will first show how Vijay Madanlal got the principle of obliteration wrong. Will then come to relegislation...

Kaul J: There is no difference in perception that where the court identifies a defect, it may be cured. Your argument seems to be...

Singhvi: The nature of the defect and the method of curing.