New Delhi: Two men sentenced to a 30-day jail term for creating a ruckus in the Delhi Assembly on Wednesday moved the Delhi high court, seeking the prosecution of 10 AAP MLAs who had allegedly beaten them up.
Justices Siddharth Mridul and Najmi Waziri asked the counsel for the two jailed men — Jagdeep Rana and Rajan Kumar Madan to move an application for amending the main petition in which they challenged the validity of an Assembly rule.
Under the rule, a person accused of breach of privilege of the House can be punished without being heard. The two men, whose jail term comes to an end on Thursday, had sought action against the MLAs by narrating the incident in their affidavit, which did not impress the bench.
“You cannot implead the persons by way of an affidavit. You need to move a proper application seeking an amendment in this regard. This affidavit will not help,” the bench said.
The counsel for the two agreed to the court’s direction. The court has now listed the matter for further hearing on August 29. Their lawyer, Sumit Chaudhary, submitted that the MLAs could claim immunity for their “criminal actions” under the garb of privileges of members of the Legislative Assembly and, thus, were liable for criminal prosecution.
Rana and Madan were sent to jail on June 28 by Assembly speaker Ram Niwas Goel for throwing pamphlets and raising slogans in the House while in session. They are seeking the prosecution of Amanatullah Khan, Jarnail Singh, Mohinder Goyal, Rajesh Gupta, Rituraj, Sanjeev Jha, Somnath Bharti, Nitin Tyagi, Prakash and Praveen Kumar.
In their plea, the two said the Aam Aadmi Party MLAs attacked them in the Assembly corridors on June 28, after they raised slogans and threw pamphlets in the House demanding the resignation of Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain.
The deputy secretary, Delhi Legislative Assembly, on Wednesday filed the affidavit on the plea challenging the validity of the Delhi Assembly rule, and said the petition was an “abuse” of the process of law.The affidavit filed through additional standing counsel Richa Kapoor said there was “no illegality, impropriety or perversity in the order of the detention”
