The Supreme Court saw another twist during the hearing in the PMLA matter as the Court has now deferred hearing by 2 months.
The bench that was looking to matter was headed by Justice Kaul who stated that the Solicitor General seeks deferment, which would leave no time for this bench to pen down an order.
Justice Kaul added that the CJI would have to reconstitute the bench in view of one of us demitting office.
As per the reports available, the new bench will be hearing the matter. Justice Kaul who was hearing the matter would demit office on December 15, 2023 and will no more be a part of case.
The Apex Court after hearing the matter for 2 days has allowed the Centre time to respond to amended pleas by petitioners challenging at least 5 sections of PMLA other than original Sec 50 and Section 63.
The Supreme Court on September 26 constituted a special bench to hear the petitions challenging its 2022 verdict, which upheld the constitutional validity of provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) relating to arrest, seizure, presumption of innocence and stringent bail conditions.
The special bench of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Bela M. Trivedi decided to hear the revision petitions on October 18.
While hearing a case related to the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Justice Kaul revealed the composition of the special bench.
In August 2022, a bench led by the then CJI N.V. Ramana had issued notice on the review petition. The Bench had observed that two aspects of the judgment prima facie required reconsideration – one, the finding that the copy of the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) need not be given to the accused; two, reversal of the presumption of innocence.
Earlier in May 2023, a two-judge bench had refused to refer the verdict in the Vijay Madanlal Choudhary case to a larger bench on the grounds that it was bound to follow it as it was rendered by a larger bench consisting of three judges.