Gujarat : Different Strokes For Different Folks
BY R.K.MISRA
While the Court gave relief
to a Gujarat Congress MLA regarding his disqualification, it denied urgent
hearing of a plea from Hardik Patel of the same party, bringing into question
his ability to contest the polls.
In the space of just 24
hours, two leaders from Gujarat who looked for succour from the Supreme Court
were left with different expectations.
In the first case, the
Court on April 1 stayed the Central Election Commission's (CEC) decision
notifying the Talala assembly constituency seat in Gujarat as vacant and
declaring by-polls there along with the Lok Sabha polls. There was hurry in the
process of law at all levels in disqualifying Congress legislator Bhagabhai
Barad of Talala. In the second case, the apex court denied urgent hearing of
a plea by Congress leader Hardik Patel to suspend his conviction in a 2015
rioting case and thereby put paid to his ambitions of contesting the Lok Sabha
polls.
Barad challenged his
conviction and the principal district judge of
Veraval town in Gir Somnath district, MM Babi, stayed it on March 9 and
even allowed his plea seeking suspension of the sentence as well as bail until
the pendency of the appeal. Soon after, the leader of the Congress Opposition
in the Vidhan Sabha, Paresh Dhanani, met the Speaker and presented the Court
order suspending his conviction alongside a memorandum seeking his
reinstatement.
Apparently in a tearing
hurry to get the Congress MLA out of the way, the BJP government moved the High
Court on March 11, challenging the stay. On March 15, a single judge bench of
Justice Sonia Gokani set aside the stay and asked the sessions court to once
again apply its mind, noting that lower courts should stay convictions in only
rare cases. However, the hearing in the sessions court could not take place as
scheduled on March 25 as the judge went on leave till April 1.
Barad then approached a
division bench of the High Court on March 11 but failed to get any relief. The
bench ruled that conviction automatically leads to disqualification, so the
seat stood vacated. Post this order, the by-election was to be held on April 23
along with the Lok Sabha elections to 26 seats in Gujarat. On March 28, Barad
moved the Supreme Court, where a bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi
along with Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna stayed the by-poll and
issued a notice to the Election Commission.
The Court took exception to
the unusual hurry by the poll body in notifying the election and without taking
notice of the stay then in existence. “How can you declare the seat to be
vacant on March 10 when his conviction was stayed on March 7?” the bench asked.
While the Vijay Rupani-led BJP
government in Gujarat showed great speed in the case of the Congress
legislator, the same alacrity was not witnessed in the case of its own
ministers. In June 2013, Union water resources minister Babubhai Bokhiria, who
was sentenced to three years imprisonment by a Porbandar court in a Rs 54-crore
illegal limestone mining case along with others did not face any
disqualification. His conviction was also stayed by the sessions court. But the
state government did not challenge it.
After the complaint against
Bokhiria in 2006, he had left the country and was declared a proclaimed
offender. The Porbandar police arrested him in 2007. The High Court later
released him on bail. He contested the Vidhan Sabha elections in December 2012,
defeated Gujarat Congress president Arjun Modhwadia and was made a cabinet
minister in the Modi government.
In November 2014, Bokhiria
was acquitted in the case. At one point, he faced numerous criminal
charges but the taint did not prevent him from rising in the ranks.
Then, there is the 2008
case of the Rs 400-crore fisheries scam when Dilip Sanghani and
Purshottam Solanki were ministers in the Modi cabinet in Gujarat. Solanki, then
minister of state for fisheries, and currently state minister for animal
husbandry and cow protection, had granted fishing contracts for 58 reservoirs
to his favourites. Sanghani was then agriculture minister. There were
allegations of corruption by both of them and an aggrieved contractor, Maradia,
knocked the doors of the High Court, which then scrapped the Rs 2.4 crore
contract granted by the minister. A repeat tender fetched Rs 45 crore. Maradia
claimed that the loss to the exchequer over ten years was Rs 400 crore.
Maradia again approached
the High Court seeking prosecution of Solanki. The matter turned controversial
in 2012 when governor Kamla Beniwal granted sanction to prosecute Solanki. Wonder
of all wonders, the government of anti-corruption crusader Narendra Modi,
challenged her decision in the High Court but lost. The case continues to be in
litigation limping along at a snail’s pace. In December 2018, the High Court
refused to quash lower court proceedings against the two and ordered them to
appear before the Gandhinagar court in two weeks. Solanki, ailing with kidney
complications, has not done so till date.
Solanki, incidentally, also
figured in the Srikrishna Commission report on the 1993 Mumbai riots where he
allegedly led the mobs. He is also a former TADA detainee but Modi had no
qualms keeping him as a minister in his government .A warrant of arrest for
non-appearance before a court is out for a sitting minister of the BJP
government in Gujarat, yet not a fly stirs among the ruling elite crusading
against corruption!.
In the second case, the
Supreme Court denied urgent hearing of a plea of Hardik Patel to suspend his
conviction in a 2015 rioting case so that he could contest the Lok Sabha
elections. A bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra and also comprising of
Justices MM Shantanagoudar and Navin Sinha said there was no urgency in hearing
the matter as the High Court order was passed in August last year. “The order
was passed in August 2018. What is the urgency now?” the bench said while
refusing to give urgent hearing on the petition.
Patel had moved the
Court after his plea for stay was rejected by Gujarat High Court last week. He
was awarded a two-year jail term by a Visnagar court in July 2018 in connection
with mob violence at BJP MLA Rishikesh Patel’s office in July
2015. According to Hardik’s lawyer, he was not even present at the site of the
violence but was held guilty under an apex court order that said that those
individuals or organisations spearheading movements will be held accountable in
cases of violence.
It is obvious that there are different strokes for different people in BJP ruled Gujarat !
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