Someone in Supreme Court protecting PM Modi, alleges activist Saket Gokhale

Activist Saket Gokhale says he has massive concerns that someone in the Supreme Court registry has been trying to protect PM Modi in a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by him seeking probe into PM Modi’s assets.

In April this year, Saket Gokhale filed a PIL in the Supreme Court seeking a probe into the Prime Minister’s undeclared assets. On April 16, he was given a list of defects, which were simply clerical defects which had to be corrected to list the PIL. He corrected them almost immediately, asking to file the PIL again. He checked the status of the PIL again and again on the website, which is usually cleared within a day or two, but this time it was not cleared.

After 10 days, Gokhale called up the SC registry to check up with the status. He was then called into the SC registry for a discussion about more of the “defects” that had popped up in the PIL. He was handed a list of defects again when he went in. He was put off because ideally, these defects should have been given to him the first time itself, and most of these defects were just repetitions from the first draft of the PIL.

More surprisingly, Gokhale was questioned as to why respondent no. 3 (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) was made party. This completely stunned him because of the simple fact that the inquiry was about PM Narendra Modi’s undeclared assets, so, it is obvious that he will be made party.

This made it seem like somebody was making him go in circles to stall or avoid his PIL entirely. Saket Gokhale then shared his concerns on social media platforms:

Excerpts from his Twitter/Facebook post

“In my PIL, I have serious concerns that some entities in the registry are making an attempt to protect PM Modi by raising such frivolous questions as "defects" to prevent listing of my case.

To ask me why Modi has been made a party to a case against Modi is surreal.

To decide whether someone can be made a party to a case is the prerogative of the judiciary & H'nble judges. If my petition has no merit, the judiciary will dismiss it or remove PM Modi as a respondent.

It is shocking that these decisions are being made by the registry.

Example - dodgy advocate M L Sharma's petition on Article 370 was listed for hearing even though it was full of defects. Shouldn't SC registry have flagged it?

On the other hand, P. Chidambaram didn't get an urgent hearing because the registry flagged "defects" in his plea.

I'll be writing a letter to the Honorable Chief Justice today praying for his intervention into this matter.

I'm not a lawyer & I'm a man of limited means.

How can I seek justice in a matter of immense public interest if some powerful entities are being protected?”