Attorney-general Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the state of Arunachal Pradesh, informed the Supreme Court on Monday that the offices and residences of former chief minister and the council of ministers were not sealed and documents had not been seized.
Making this submission before a five-judge constitutional bench, comprising Justices J.S. Khehar, Dipak Misra, Madan B. Lokur, Pinaki Chandra Ghose and N.V. Ramani, the attorney-general said that the governor’s office was willing to furnish whatever documents the Speaker and the ruling party wanted, provided a list of requirements was given to them. He said since there were over 1,000 files running into over one lakh pages, the governor copies of each and every file cannot be given to them as they have no relevance to the dispute involved before the bench. They (the Speaker and the ruling party) can take whatever material they want from the place.
The A-G was referring to the allegation by the Speaker and the Congress that the governor has sealed the CM and other ministers’ offices after President Rule was imposed in the state.
Senior counsel Fali Nariman and Kapil Sibal, however, said, “We cannot remember what documents have been taken away. Unless we see the list of documents, we will not be able to say which are the documents we require.”
Justice Khehar made it clear to the AG to “give them the whole list of documents”.
“Let them say what documents they want which have a nexus with the present case and you supply them these documents.” When Mr Nariman complained that the former deputy speaker was writing all sorts of letters to the governor and the government and disturbing the status quo, the bench said, “We don’t want to subject everyone to our jurisdiction.”
Even as senior counsel Rakesh Diwedi, appearing for rebel Congress MLAs, was justifying the governor’s action to prepone the Assembly session, the bench said “a governor cannot act as per his “whims and fancies”.
The court was of the view that the governor perhaps could convene the House on his own if it was a case of testing the confidence of the chief minister.
Justice Khehar said “But there is something serious. The Governor has never contested that the government does not enjoy the confidence of the House. All you say is about the Speaker. The main issue is only about speaker. You cannot ask (summoning) for it on whims and fancies. There must be some procedure. Somebody can’t get up and say I will move a no-confidence motion.”
The bench was of the view that there can be an emergency or advancing of the House in certain situations where the Governor can ask the Chief Minister in the event of his losing a majority to convene the House. “But that situation has nor arisen. It is the question and determination of the order of the speaker whether it is valid or not, whether the speaker should be disqualified or he must continue.” Arguments will continue on Tuesday.
