Senior Advocate and Member of Parliament Kapil Sibal said on Monday that the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) was the most draconian statute that had ever seen the light of day in the country.
The Senior Counsel told the Bench of Justice Krishna Murari and Justice V. Ramasubramanian that PMLA had given draconian powers to the Directorate of Enforcement for arrest, attachment, search and seizure. He added that since the safeguards provided in the Code of Criminal Procedure were excluded and hence, there were no safeguards at all under the statute.
The Apex Court heard a batch of appeals against an order of the Madras High Court that had ordered a fresh enquiry into the cash-for-jobs scam, in which Tamil Nadu minister, V. Senthil Balaji, among others, has been accused of accepting bribes from job aspirants in exchange of appointments to the state transport corporation between 2011 and 2015.
The Senior Advocate said the application of PMLA and the Directorate’s modus operandi were not only against all ‘canons of justice’, but also violative of the principles of federalism.
As per Sibal, the Enforcement Directorate was going around the country, targeting people. If the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) wanted to conduct a probe, it was important to get the state’s consent. However, there was no such restriction for the ED, which had started investigating even predicate offences.
The Senior Counsel said this violated the federal principle.
He said suppose a scheduled offence had taken place in West Bengal, but a small part of the offence was in Delhi. In such a case, the ED would file a complaint in Delhi and the cases in Bengal get transferred to the capital. These are issues which can affect the polity of the country.