From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its order on the Andhra Pradesh Government’s appeal against the High Court staying scuttling all probes by the previous Chandrababu Naidu regime, saying nothing unusual as the succeeding governments try to settle scores by ordering the probes.
It said that is how the political rivalries brought out the truth in an earlier top court’s judgment in late Haryana chief minister Bhajan Lal’s case.
The Bench of Justices M R Shah and Hrishikesh Roy reserved its order. It also referred how then UPA government set up the Justice U C Banerjee Commission to inquire int the 2002 burning of a coach of Sabarmati Express coming from Ayodhya at Godhra railway station in Gujarat when two SITs headed by the Gujarat High Court judges were already there.
Senior advocate Sidharth Dave, appearing for the respondent and complainant Verla Ramaiah, told the court that the government order setting up fact finding cabinet subcommittee was a “malafide, and biased” exercise of the power for targeting the earlier government headed by Chandrababu as a “witch- hunt.”
Dave said that all the allegations being levelled now by the present ruling establishment were never raised when they were in the opposition between 2014-2019.
As Dave reiterated a number of his arguments already advanced, an apparently unpersuaded Justice Shah saw nothing unusual in the fact funding exercise undertaken by the sub-committee and the constitution of SIT to inquire and investigate on the basis of a report submitted by this sub-committee.
