No Interim Bail For Chandrababu Naidu In Skill Development Scam Case; Supreme Court Reserves Verdict

The Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved its verdict on a plea by former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu for quashing of a first information report (FIR) in the skill development scam case. However, despite fervent appeals on behalf of the Telugu Desam Party president, the court declined to grant interim bail.A bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela M Trivedi was hearing Naidu’s special leave petition challenging an order passed by the Andhra Pradesh High Court last month declining to quash a first information report (FIR) arraigning the ex-chief minister as one of the accused in the scam. Naidu was arrested in connection with this case on September 9 by the AP CID and has been in custody since.At the end of his rejoinder, Senior Advocate Harish Salve today urged the court, "He is a 73-year-old man who has been inside for 40 days. I have a request for interim bail. Your Lordships may consider releasing him. If you eventually rule against me, he can go back. In the 2015-16 inquiry, the government's lament was that nothing came of it. Now, in 2021, they are desperately grasping at straws."Senior Advocate Sidharth Luthra, also representing the politician accused of corruption, endorsed the request for interim bail, pointing to a 'specific prayer' made in his application. This request was, however, strongly resisted on behalf of the State of Andhra Pradesh; with the state's counsel indicating that a bail application was pending before the trial court, which would have to be considered on its own merits."That's not on Section 17A," Luthra quickly objected. He added - "Here, we made a specific prayer. We had not closed our right to seek relief with respect to Section 17A. My learned friend who argued before the trial court did not even touch the provision because it was subject to adjudication by this court. We are saying that if the remand order is held to be bad, then release has to follow."At the end of the submissions, the court decided against directing Naidu's release on interim bail. Reserving the verdict, Justice Bose said, "Hearing concluded. We have heard the main matter and we will deliver the judgment."What has happened so far?The court started hearing Naidu's plea on October 3, after Justice SVN Bhatti recused himself from hearing it on October 1, leading to the matter being reassigned to the current bench headed by Justice Bose. The discussion has mainly revolved around the applicability of Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. Section 17A, inserted in July 2018 by way of an amendment, mandates that the competent authority's prior sanction must be obtained before launching an investigation against a public servant. It is this provision that Naidu has cited to challenge his arrest by the Andhra Pradesh police's CID. The thrust of his argument is that the department did not obtain the governor's sanction before arraigning him as the 37th accused in the skill development scam case.On the first day of the hearing, the Justice Bose-led bench raised questions about whether the provision would apply to an offence predating the 2018 amendment that introduced it. The court also questioned whether Section 17A would be applicable when the FIR mentioned offences under both the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Indian Penal Code, 1860. A battery of lawyers - including senior advocates Harish Salve, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, and Sidharth Luthra - appearing for Naidu, argued that Section 17A should be applicable since the inquiry commenced after the 2018 amendment, notwithstanding the date of the offence. On the contrary, the State, represented by Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, contended that Section 17A would not apply to the present case inasmuch as it was introduced in July 2018, after the alleged offences had already been committed and the probe initiated. The hearing was finally adjourned with an instruction to the state government to provide the entire compilation of documents submitted to the high court.The debate over the interpretation of Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act continued on the subsequent three dates of hearing. On the next day, Salve argued that Section 17A was introduced to prevent instances of "regime revenge." Maintaining that the inquiry against Naidu only began in 2021, the senior counsel asserted that Naidu would be entitled to the protective cover of Section 17A. In this connection, he relied on the union government's standard operating procedure on Section 17A to argue that prior approval was required at every stage, from inquiry to the investigation. In response to this, the court asked the senior counsel if it could adopt an interpretation of the section that would "defeat the objectives of the act". Salve countered this by saying that the interpretation would strengthen the legislation, allowing public servants to act freely and instituting a framework of accountability for the investigating agency.When the matter was taken up again,...

No Interim Bail For Chandrababu Naidu In Skill Development Scam Case; Supreme Court Reserves Verdict

Awstika Das

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