SC judgment tries to quantify what constitutes parliamentary privileges
@the_news_21
Thiruvananthapuram: Barely less than three months into office with a fresh mandate, Kerala’s Left Democratic Front (LDF) government headed by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan suffered a grim legal and political blow as the Supreme Court of India on Wednesday rejected its plea to stall the trial in the 2015 assembly ruckus case, when the CPI (M)-led coalition was in the opposition benches.
Apart from the legal setback arising from the verdict that has implications on the limits of the parliamentary privileges of the legislature and the speaker, the ruling has come as a double whammy for the government as its Education Minister V Sivankutty of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) is among a group of sitting and former legislators who have to face trial in the case in a Chief Judicial Magistrate court here.
The case pertains to bedlam in the State Assembly on March 13, 2015. The then finance minister and Kerala Congress (Mani) (KC-M) leader late K M Mani was scheduled to present the annual budget in the house, the last by the 2011-16 United Democratic Front (UDF) ministry led by then chief minister and Congress veteran Oommen Chandy. The LDF had raised serious bribery allegations against Mani, a seasoned regional player.
The opposition had signalled that they would not allow Mani to present the budget. As the minister went ahead, slogan-shouting LDF embers rushed to the well of the house, overturned furniture, smashed computer monitors, broke mike stands and came near to blows with the watch-and-ward and the ruling front members.
The entire murky scene was telecast live by news channels. The footage of the unprecedented event has since then been shown frequently by news outlets whenever there happened any related development. The whole thing remains an indelible blot on the image of the self-proclaimed model state, which boasts itself of being the most educated, cultured and law-abiding society of India. An FIR was then lodged based on the complaint by the Legislature Secretary, seeking action for destruction of public property.
In the elections that held in 2016 the LDF came come to power. As expected, the government opposed the proceedings in the case holding that the complaint of the legislature secretary did not have the sanction of the Speaker and a judicial scrutiny of what had happened in the house would amount to encroachment on the rights and privileges of the legislature.
As the trial court rejected this argument, the government approached the Kerala High Court, which only upheld the lower court order. This followed the government’s appeal in the apex court.
The apex court bench headed by Justice D Y Chandrachud in the case held that “such a ruckus cannot be held as parliamentary proceedings”. The ruling went on to say that “privileges and immunity are not status which makes them stand on unequal footing.”
This judgment will undoubtedly go down as a landmark one in the legal history of the country. It is sure to serve as a template in cases pertaining to parliamentary rights, privileges and immunities. It will be analysed and interpreted by legal experts, and lawyers are to cite when similar cases come up from any state in the country.
Coming back to Kerala, the unsavoury episode had taken a queer twist with political equations in the state changing over the years. K M Mani, who was at the centre of the issue, passed away and his son Jose K Mani took over the party’s leadership. After a prolonged internal squabbles, intrigues and skirmishes, Jose switched sides to the LDF, which elatedly co-opted it without any qualm as this outfit was expected to boost the coalition’s electoral prospects in the Central Travancore Region.
For all practical purposes, KC (M) has been held as pro-Christian outfit for long and it has pockets of influence in Travancore region. Now a partner in the LDF KC (M) Jose faction has been rewarded with a ministerial berth. It is an altogether different story that Jose K Mani himself was defeated in the elections.
As expected, Sivankutty has rejected the opposition demand for his resignation from the cabinet on moral grounds, holding that he is confident of proving his innocence during the trial. Others to face trial in the case include two former ministers in the previous LDF government.
