New Delhi: Days after the death of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) patriarch Parkash Singh Badal, the Supreme Court of India Friday set aside a summoning order issued against Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal, his father Parkash Singh Badal, and party senior VP Daljit Singh Cheema in an alleged forgery case over the political party’s dual constitutions.
The top court ruled that the summon order issued by the trail court was "nothing but abuse of process of law". A bench of Justices M R Shah and C T Ravikumar, which had reserved its verdict on a batch of pleas filed by Badals and senior Akali leader Daljit Singh Cheema on April 11, quashed the summons issued by the Hoshiarpur trial court in Punjab and upheld by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
The petition was filed by Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leaders, former Punjab chief minister Prakash Singh Badal and his son Sukhbir Singh Badal, challenging the initiation of cheating and forgery proceedings against them in a Hoshiarpur Court. The complaint accuses them of falsely claiming to be secular before the Election Commission when the outfit was essentially religious.
A bench of justices MR Shah and CT Ravikumar had said that it is for the Election Commission to decide whether the political outfit is religion-based while maintaining that the court will only examine whether the allegations in the complaint relating to cheating and forgery have been made out. They said, "We will not say whether the political party is religion-based. It is for the EC to say so and cancel the registration of the political party or its symbol. We will restrict ourselves to the complaint," before reserving orders.
A Hoshiarpur resident Balwant Singh Khera had filed a complaint in 2009 alleging that the SAD has two constitutions - one that it submitted to the Gurdwara Election Commission for registration as a party to manage gurdwaras and the other to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to seek recognition as a political party. He contended it amounted to cheating.
