![JMA – Ninja & Deep Jandu [Official MV] Kaptaan](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-dsfIh319s0/maxresdefault.jpg "JMA – Ninja & Deep Jandu [Official MV] Kaptaan")
A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu deferred the matter as the file reached late.
“We will have it tomorrow. The file hadn’t reached my brother judge (Justice Nagu),” Justice Datta said orally.
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Senior advocate Vikas Singh appeared for the Punjab government.
On Monday, the state government moved the top court against the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s direction on a petition filed by advocate Nikhil Saraf.
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The petitioner submitted that no action has been taken yet, even after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) sent communications to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government.
It was contended that the allegations warranted an independent investigation as it raised serious questions about the state government’s functioning.
The high court also directed the Punjab Police and the government that all documents pertaining to the case be handed over to the CBI.
Assailing the high court’s decision on various grounds, the Punjab government said the impugned judgment suffers from errors such as treating information shared under Section 66(2) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) as a direction that makes registration “inevitable”, contrary to the 2022 decision of the apex court in the Vijay Madanlal Choudhary case.
The plea said the high court’s judgment directs registration of an FIR into decisions of public servants on transfers, tenders and policy without the previous approval mandated by Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act, and faults the bureau for not associating a serving officer whom it could not lawfully enquire into without such approval.
The state government said the judgment sends a central agency into the state, where general consent under Section 6 of the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE) Act stands withdrawn since November 8, 2020 without a finding of the exceptional circumstances required by the state and without any finding that the bureau of investigation is incapable or biased.
It urged that in the alternative, the court may direct that the Bureau of Investigation of Punjab shall complete the preliminary inquiry and place an action-taken report before this court within such time as this court may fix, and that the observations in the impugned judgment shall not be relied upon by any agency or court pending the disposal of this petition.
