Even as the Supreme Court in a latest judgment this week had tried to dispel any notion about judicial activism in its verdicts, the Union government on Friday filed a review petition for recalling of its order on “black money” case citing the “overreach” of its jurisdiction by the top court in setting up an SIT to investigate the matter.
The review petition settled by Attorney-General G.E. Vahanvati and additional solicitor general Harin Rawal after the resignation of solicitor-general Gopal Subramanium, who was dealing with the black money case, was filed in the top court registry late in the evening.
Normally review petitions are filed when there were certain errors of facts and law in a judgment, but in this case, the government has virtually sought “recall” of the verdict passed by a bench of Justice B. Sudershan Reddy and S.S. Nijjar on July 4. Justice Reddy had retired soon after passing the verdict.
The court had set up an SIT under former Supreme Court Judge B.P. Jeevan Reddy as its chairman and another former top court Judge M.B. Shah as vice-chairman and included RAW director in the 13-member multi-disciplinary probe team, which would investigate into various aspects of the black money, including ongoing probe against Pune-businessman Hasan Ali Khan.
Besides, the top court had ordered disclosure of the names of Indians with “black accounts” in Liechtenstein’s LGT bank, provided to the government by the German authorities.
The government law officers, who had extensive consultations with finance minister Pranaba Mukherjee on the draft of the review petition, has termed these directions in the nature that led to “overreach” of the executive powers by the judiciary.
In a bid to make its case for “total recall” of the July 4 verdict, the government has cited the constitutional scheme of separation of power defining the spheres of functioning for executive, legislature and judiciary.
And in this context, the Centre stated that investigation of any case was essentially an executive function and the role of the court comes only after a chargesheet is filed by the probe agency. Putting the probe team under the supervision of two retired Judges, had also been questioned by the government on the same logic of separation of power.