The
Supreme Court on Tuesday is scheduled to hear a plea seeking direction to seize
the symbol or deregister a party that promises or distributes "irrational
freebies" before polls and a separate petition of the Aam Aadmi Party
challenging postponement of MCD polls on grounds of delimitation of wards in
the national capital. A bench headed by CJI N V Ramana on January 25 had issued
notices to the Centre and the poll panel on the PIL of lawyer and BJP leader
Ashwini Upadhyay seeking action against political parties for the irrational
freebies.
Another
bench headed by Justice A M Khanwilkar would consider the plea of Delhi's
ruling AAP challenging the postponement of the Municipal Corporations of Delhi
(MCD) polls on grounds of delimitation of wards in the national capital.
The AAP
says the unification of three MCDs and the consequential delimitation exercise
cannot be a valid ground to defer the civic polls. The announcement of the
election schedule for the three Delhi civic bodies was deferred in March this
year and later, the Centre brought a Bill for the unification of MCDs.
The
process relating to the delimitation of municipal wards is underway in Delhi.
A bench
headed by senior most judge Justice Uday Umesh Lalit would consider the plea of
jailed 'conman' Sukesh Chandrashekhar and his wife seeking to shift them from
the Tihar Jail on grounds of an alleged threat to their lives.
The court, however, has widened the ambit of the
proceedings by asking Chandrashekhar, who has claimed that Rs 12.5 crore was
extorted from him by some officials at the Tihar Jail here, to submit the list
of persons and details about the payments made on his behalf and questioned him
as to who made the payment on his behalf.
The bench said it would go into the "root of
the matter".
The plea of the Centre against activist Nandita Haksar
would also be taken up for her alleged role in fleeing of illegal Rohingya
immigrants.
The top court had earlier stayed the order of the
Manipur High Court permitting the seven Rohingyas to seek refugee status.
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