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Kapil Sibal holds up ‘ED note’ on Chidambaram in SC, Centre says ‘not ours’
At a Supreme Court hearing on Monday, P Chidambaram’s lawyer Kapil Sibal came up with material to back up his charge and held up the ED note to assert that the federal probe agency had gone all out to hurl allegations at the Congress leader without any basis.
Former minister P Chidambaram’s legal team has continued to attack the Delhi High Court ruling denying anticipatory bail to the senior Congress leader, telling the Supreme Court that the judge relied heavily on an Enforcement Directorate note that was given to the high court by the government without following the procedure.
At a Supreme Court hearing on Monday, Chidambaram’s lawyer Kapil Sibal came up with material to back up his charge and held up the ED note to assert that the federal probe agency had gone all out to hurl allegations at the Congress leader without giving him an opportunity to give his side of the story.
But the Centre quickly contested that the document in Sibal’s hands had originated in the government.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who took a quick look at the document, denied that the government had handed over any note to the court.
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“I don’t know from where Chidambaram’s lawyer got hold of the note because it is not on record,” the Centre’s second most-senior law officer told the Supreme Court bench led by Justice R Banumathi.
The authenticity of the note was an important point made by Chidambaram’s legal team, which has challenged the high court rejecting anticipatory bail in a case investigated by the ED. Chidambaram’s team had argued that the judge did not apply his mind and had copy-pasted paragraphs from the note that the ED had given to the high court judge.
The government’s effort to question the authenticity of the document could take some of the sting out of the Congress leader’s barbs. Much of it would depend on how Tushar Mehta would deliver his detailed rebuttal in the court on Tuesday when the bench hears him make his counter arguments.
On Monday, Kapil Sibal’s focus was to establish that the ED did not really have a case against Chidambaram in the INX Media case and were targeting him without doing their homework first.
The INX Media case relates to alleged irregularities in Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance given to the media group for foreign investment to the tune of ₹305 crore in 2007, when Chidambaram was finance minister.
CBI registered a first information report on May 15, 2017, alleging irregularities in the manner the clearance had been awarded. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed a money laundering case a year later.
