The peculiar nature of the case, where a sedition chargesheet has been filed against college students over sloganeering, has led to a fair share of confusion in the corridors of power.
On January 19, a magistrate court had refused to take cognizance of the Delhi Police chargesheet in the JNU sloganeering case, citing the absence of prosecution sanction from the Delhi government. According to official records, police had applied for sanction just two hours before filing the chargesheet on January 14.
While there is a lot of speculation around the Delhi government’s position on the issue, The Indian Express has been told by authoritative sources that the nature of the case led the Home Department knocking on the door of the Law Department, to seek clarity on what the “guidelines” are.
While inter-departmental consultations are par for the course in nearly every issue, what makes this exchange particularly significant is the fact that the Home Department had to seek guidelines as there is no immediate precedence for it to refer to in charting the course ahead.
It is learnt that the Home Department, which controls the Directorate of Prosecution, mentioned in the file that the last precedence of a similar nature dates back to 1982. “The Home Department moved the file to the Law Department with specific queries on guidelines. It was not about whether prosecution can be granted or not. It was about framing guidelines as there is a gap of nearly four decades between the issue on its table and the last available reference,” an official, who did not wish to be named, said.
The Law Department has already responded to the query from Home, and is currently not dealing with any other aspect of the issue, sources added.
The Delhi Police has sought prosecution sanction against 10 accused, including former JNU Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, for allegedly sloganeering and leading a crowd chanting “anti-national” slogans on the JNU campus on February 9, 2016 during an event to commemorate the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
The police had told the magistrate court that it will get the required sanctions within 10 days.
Sources stressed that at this stage, the Law Department is in no way examining whether prosecution sanction can be granted or not.
The response of the Law Secretary to the query of the Home Department had drawn the ire of Law Minister Kailash Gahlot. The minister took objection to the fact that he was not kept in the loop, and issued the law secretary a showcause notice.
However, Law Secretary Anoop Mendiratta told The Indian Express that the nature of the query was such that it did require the law minister’s intervention. In his response to the showcause notice, Mendiratta also said that Lt Governor Anil Baijal was the competent authority to take a final call on granting prosecution sanction to the Delhi Police.
Subsequently, Gahlot issued another memorandum to the Law Secretary, saying he was not satisfied with the senior bureaucrat’s response. Incidentally, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had tweeted that the law department is examining whether the act of the accused amounted to sedition or not.
