A court in Delhi on Wednesday rejected a plea seeking the registration of a first information report against Union minister Anurag Thakur and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Parvesh Verma, for allegedly making hate speeches during the Assembly elections in the Capital, The Indian Express reported.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vishal Pahuja dismissed the plea, filed by Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat, noting that the prior sanction of the Centre had not been taken.
Karat’s legal team, asked if they had procured permission, replied in the negative. Consequently, the magistrate said: “Admittedly, there is no previous sanction obtained by the complainants from the competent authority to prosecute the respondents for offences alleged in the complaint. Hence, in view of the settled position of law...the complaint deserves to be dismissed for being not tenable in the eyes of law. Accordingly, the same stands dismissed.”
The counsel for Karat argued that prior sanction is required only before the court takes cognizance of the complaint, and not before passing of order for registration of FIR. Karat had approached the court after her complaints to Delhi Commissioner of Police SN Shrivastava and the station house officer of Parliament Street went unanswered.
The Election Commission had on January 29 issued a notice to Thakur for allegedly inciting people to chant the slogan “desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maro saalon ko” (shoot the traitors of the country). Verma, on the other hand, had called Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal a terrorist. He had also made objectionable remarks about anti-Citizenship Act protestors in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh locality during the election campaign. In both instances, the poll panel imposed a temporary campaigning ban on him.
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