Supreme Court to hear contempt plea against Congress president

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear on Monday a contempt petition filed by BJP member of Parliament, Meenakshi Lekhi seeking criminal contempt action against Congress president Rahul Gandhi for his remarks against the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the recent Rafale verdict.

A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna told senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the petitioner, that it will hear the plea on April 15.

Mr Rohatgi, appearing for Ms Lekhi, told the bench that the Congress president had made a remark that the ‘Supreme Court has said, chowkidar chor hai’ in the verdict.

The counsel said that Mr Gandhi has attributed his personal remarks as that of the apex court’s and tried to create prejudice, which is, per se, contempt.

On April 10, the apex court had rejected the Centre’s argument claiming privilege over the secret documents and that they could not be used as evidence for hearing the review petition filed by Arun shourie and others in the Rafale deal seeking a review of the December 2018 verdict giving clean chit to the deal.

The court said it would have a detailed hearing of the review petitions later taking into consideration the documents placed in the court.