Chandigarh: Punjab advocate general (AG) Atul Nanda is facing the heat as voices of dissent within the state Congress are becoming shriller over the adverse order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in the 2015 Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan police firing case.
Nanda, who is considered to be the one of the closest aides of Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh and enjoys his confidence, is being targeted by the party members for putting up a “weak defence” in the court.
Earlier this week, Congress Rajya Sabha MP Partap Singh Bajwa, a known baiter of the CM as well as Nanda, and estranged party MLA Navjot Singh Sidhu launched an attack on the advocate general.
On Wednesday, Amarinder Singh’s office released a statement by the CM, presenting a staunch defence of the AG and calling the attack “politically motivated”.
The events unfolded after the HC quashed the Punjab Police Special Investigation Team (SIT)’s probe into the firing cases. The case pertains to firing on crowds in Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan, which were protesting incidents of desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib.
The 9 April court order came on a petition filed by one of the accused policemen, alleging that SIT member Inspector General, Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, was conducting a biased, one-sided probe. Finding these contentions true, the HC also asked for the reconstitution of a new SIT without Singh as member.
The IG has since resigned in protest while the issue has since snowballed into a major political slugfest.
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Attack on Nanda
On Monday, Bajwa demanded a white paper on the amount of money spent by the state in defending the various desecration cases as also other cases in courts despite the state having a fully functional office of the AG.
“We have seen the advocate general repeatedly hiring outside lawyers while refusing to appear to defend the state and do his job. The sacrilege cases are extremely sensitive to the Sikh community and Punjab as a whole,” Bajwa said in a statement on Twitter.
“It was a job of the advocate general to appear before the honorable High Court and defend the interest of the people. The fact that he failed to do so, despite urging from the chief minister, to me is simply unfathomable and his position is untenable,” he added.
Punjab Government must release white paper on all lawyers hired outside of the AG’s office to appear for the State. pic.twitter.com/8V1TThOzM1
— Partap Singh Bajwa (@Partap_Sbajwa) April 20, 2021
Earlier on 14 April, Bajwa alleged in another tweet that Nanda had spent crores on hiring advocates from Delhi, and called for the AG to be replaced.
My Statement on recent setback in High Court regarding Kotkapura Case. pic.twitter.com/2T6bTZRwB9
— Partap Singh Bajwa (@Partap_Sbajwa) April 14, 2021
Two days later, on 16 April, Sidhu held a press conference in Patiala — the constituency of the CM — taking on the government over its lackadaisical approach in the desecration and drug cases.
He had issued an equally critical video message against the Amarinder government and his team of advocates on 13 April too.
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Amarinder defends Nanda
On Wednesday, CM Amarinder Singh offered an unequivocal defence of Nanda. He trashed allegations against Nanda and his team as “baseless and politically motivated”.
According to the CM’s statement, there were two separate sets of cases in the desecration issue: one, related to the incidents of sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib; and second, related to the police firing on protesting crowds that had gathered in wake of the desecration incidents.
The CM said that he had tasked Nanda and his team to only defend the sacrilege cases, in which he regularly appeared.
“The sacrilege cases were an emotive and sensitive issue for the people of Punjab,” said the CM, adding that the case had been decisively won by the state in a detailed judgment rendered by a single judge of the HC on 25 January 2019.
In the police firing cases, the “AG was not even involved in the defence, which was being undertaken by a specialised legal team from the Supreme Court headed by leading criminal lawyers Siddharth Luthra, Senior Advocate, Harin Raval, Senior Advocate and other lawyers from Delhi”, added the CM.
Experts say Nanda not to be blamed
Speaking to ThePrint, Anupam Gupta, senior advocate in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, who has been amicus curiae in the Murthal rape case and Dera Sacha Sauda cases, called the barrage of criticism aimed at Nanda as completely misconceived and misdirected.
“I have clashed with Nanda more than once in the high court in important cases, including the Bhola drug case, and I have no reason to be partial to him. But to blame him for the high court’s adverse verdict in the sacrilege case, that too without reading the judgment which is not yet available, betrays a unidimensional approach to issues which are highly debatable in law,” Gupta said.
“Jurisprudence and adjudication are not political one-liners… they are nuanced and evolving complexities which take a whole lifetime to marshal. If Nanda’s critics believe the High Court has erred grievously in deciding the way it has, they should say so openly, rather than avoiding the risk of contempt and deflecting their displeasure towards the advocate general,” he added.
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