Chandigarh: The Punjab and Haryana High Court Wednesday rejected jailed Lok Sabha MP Amritpal Singh’s plea seeking permission to attend the proceedings of Parliament.
Amritpal, who represents the Khadoor Sahib seat in the Lok Sabha, is a Sikh separatist leader and preacher, and is detained under the National Security Act in Dibrugarh Central Jail in Assam.
During the hearing, the Centre informed the Division Bench of the high court, comprising Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Sumeet Goel, that the Lok Sabha had granted leave of absence of 54 days to Amritpal. Appearing for the Centre and the Lok Sabha, Additional Solicitor General Satyapal Jain placed on record a communication from the Lok Sabha Secretariat to the detained MP.
“With reference to your letters of even number dated 30.11.2024 and 16.12.2024 on the subject of leave of absence from sittings of the house, I am directly to inform you that 11 March, 2025, the house granted you leave of absence from sittings of the house of 54 days from 24.6.2024 to 27.2.2024, 22.7.2024 to 9.8.2024 and 25.11.2024 to 20.12.2024,” it read.
The Lok Sabha’s decision, as informed in the court Wednesday, comes a fortnight after the Lok Sabha Speaker constituted a 15-member committee to examine leave applications of Members of Parliament, including Amritpal.
Amritpal had written to the Speaker on 30 November and 16 December, 2024 to attend the sessions on the grounds that if he remained absent for 60 days, he would be disqualified from the Lok Sabha, and his seat declared vacant. He also wrote to the district magistrate of Amritsar (the detaining authority under NSA) with a similar plea.
The Lok Sabha informed him that he had been absent from Parliamentary sittings for 46 days from 24 June, 2024 to 12 December, 2024.
When there was no response from the district magistrate, Amritpal moved the high court in January this year.
The arguments in court
Strongly opposing Amritpal’s plea, the Punjab government argued that he had no Constitutional or legal right to attend Parliament while in detention. Senior advocate Anupam Gupta, representing the state government, told the court that the issue of entitlement of a detained parliamentarian to attend the sessions of Parliament had been examined at length by the Supreme Court in two leading Constitutional bench decisions.
He referred to Anandan Nambiar vs. Government of Madras from 1966, and Indira Gandhi vs. Raj Narain of 1975—both of which had negated any such right.
Confronted with these judgments, Amritpal’s counsel R.S. Bains conceded that the law laid down by the apex court went against him. However, he pleaded for Amritpal to attend Parliament through video conferencing, which was declined by the bench.
Bains also requested the bench to allow Amritpal to spend the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) funds. The bench directed him to file a representation in this regard to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha.
Amritpal was arrested by Punjab Police on 23 April, 2023 and has been under preventive detention for almost two years now. He faces nearly a dozen cases, including those of murder and kidnapping, at various places in Punjab. In one of the cases, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) has also been invoked. He is yet to be arrested and tried in all these cases.
Amritpal, who was involved in a transport business in Dubai, had landed in India in August 2022 to head the outfit Waaris Punjab De—a hardliner group established by actor Deep Sidhu, who had died in a car accident in February that year. The reins of the group were handed over to Amritpal.
Amritpal and his armed group of supporters were involved in several controversies, including the alleged kidnapping of one Varinder Singh, storming of the Ajnala Police Station, apart from vandalisation of Gurudwaras, and openly crusading for the creation of a separate Sikh state. In January this year, the Punjab Police invoked the UAPA against him for the murder of Sikh activist Gurpreet Hari Nau.
Amritpal won the 2024 Lok Sabha election as an independent candidate with a record margin of over 2 lakh votes. In his absence, Amritpal’s family, including his parents, had campaigned on his behalf.
Former Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi, now a Congress MP in the Lok Sabha, had batted for allowing Amritpal to attend the sessions of the Lok Sabha causing furore in Parliament in July 2024.
Taking up a similar petition filed by jailed Jammu and Kashmir MP Sheikh Abdul Rashid or ‘Engineer Rashid’, the Delhi High Court Wednesday asked the National Investigation Agency to clarify its stand in the matter. Rashid is facing charges under the anti-terror law, UAPA.
A bench of Justices Prathiba M. Singh and Rajneesh Kumar Gupta issued a notice to NIA on Rashid’s appeal against the trial court order, which refused to grant him custody parole or interim bail.
As interim relief, the Delhi High Court had on 10 February allowed Rashid a two-day custody parole to attend the Parliament session on 11 and 13 February.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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