The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a plea filed by a lawyer demanding the restoration of Lok Sabha membership for Nationalist Congress Party Leader Mohammed Faizal.
A bench of Justices BR Gavai, Arvind Kumar, and Prashant Kumar Mishra not only dismissed the plea petition but also imposed a cost of Rs 1 lakh on the lawyer who filed the plea.
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The court asked the lawyer to deposit Rs 50,000 each in the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) fund and the Supreme Court Advocate-on-Record (SCORA) welfare fund, respectively.
The bench, taking a dig at lawyer Ashok Pandey, criticised him for filing the petition for publicity and termed it an abuse of the legal process, as no fundamental right of the petitioner had been violated.
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“We are not going to entertain the petition just because your name can appear in the newspaper,” Justice Gavai stated.
Initially, the amount imposed by the bench was Rs five lakh on the lawyer; however, it was reduced to a fine of Rs one lakh after the petitioner requested the apex court not to impose the cost.
The petitioner, Lucknow-based advocate Ashok Pandey, argued that once a Member of Parliament is disqualified due to a criminal conviction, they should remain disqualified until acquitted by a higher court.
In a previous case, the Supreme Court imposed a fine of Rs. five lakh on Pandey for filing a petition challenging the validity of the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court’s oath because it did not include the word ‘I’.
Pandey has also submitted another petition contesting the reinstatement of Rahul Gandhi’s Lok Sabha membership, which is currently pending.
(With ANI Inputs)