SC allows TMC MP’s plea for refraining ED from summoning him during LS polls

The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Trinamool Congress (TMC) member of Parliament (MP) Abhishek Banerjee’s request for refraining Enforcement Directorate (ED) from summoning him for probe related to a money laundering case until the completion of the general elections scheduled between April and June.

A bench of justices Bela M Trivedi and Pankaj Mithal will on July 10 take up Banerjee’s petition challenging ED’s summons for questioning him in Delhi. “The counsel for the petitioner says that the petitioner is an MP and that he is contesting the general elections in view of which the matter be deferred till July. List this matter on July 10,” said the court.

The court noted submissions of senior counsel Kapil Sibal, who appeared for Banerjee, that the MP has not been summoned since September 2021 and the federal agency be asked not to call him until the completion of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. “He is a sitting MP and will be contesting the election again from Diamond Harbour scheduled for June 1,” Sibal said. He added ED should be asked not to summon him amid the election.

The bench asked the agency, represented by additional solicitor-general SV Raju, if it was willing to accept the request. “If you have not called him for such a long time, let him be not called for a couple of months more…he is also contesting the elections,” it told Raju.

Raju first said he would get instructions from the competent authority. He later said that ED will not summon Banerjee until the next date of hearing. Raju said that ED would not grant the same concession to the MP’s wife, Rujira, who has also petitioned the court against the summons.

The court deferred the hearing of a petition filed by Nalini Chidambaram, wife of former Union minister P Chidambaram, in a case related to the Saradha chit fund scam to July 10. Both Banerjee and Chidambaram have filed petitions questioning ED’s power to summon people outside their ordinary place of residence.

Banerjee and Rujira in March 2022 filed their appeal against a Delhi high court order dismissing their petition against the ED summons. The couple challenged the September 10, 2021, summons on the grounds that they should not be required to appear in New Delhi but in their home town or place of domicile in Kolkata.

The summons were related to an illegal coal mining case that came to light in 2020 following a complaint from the government-owned Eastern Coalfields Limited. The Central Bureau of Investigation and ED are probing the case.

The couple’s petition referred to a question of law whether ED can assume a “pan-India jurisdiction” to summon any person, at any place of their choice in utter derogation of the fundamental rights of the witness/accused persons, principles of fair play and expeditious investigation and the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.