Two leading English dailies get notice over reports of 'cut-paste'
Chidambaram has also moved an appeal in the Supreme Court with respect to his bail
New Delhi: After several media outlets published over the weekend that the Delhi High Court had reproduced the facts of a two-year-old money-laundering case in the order denying bail to ex-Finance Minister P Chidambaram with respect to the ED's INX Media case; the court on Monday took suo motu cognizance of the reports and has issued a notice to the Chief Editors of two leading English dailies of the country, directing them to issue clarifications in their respective newspapers on Tuesday (today).
Justice Suresh Kumar Kait, the same judge who dismissed Chidambaram's bail plea in the ED matter on November 15, took cognizance of the media reports and clarified that the judgement denying bail to the Congress heavyweight was only citing facts of the other money-laundering case.
In Monday's order, the court said that in paragraph 34 of the November 15 order, it referred to the court's observations with respect to the Rohit Tandon Vs Enforcement Directorate case. In the following paragraph, the court had reproduced the facts of the Tandon case verbatim.
Several media outlets had picked the order apart, especially because the error was spotted hours after the Supreme Court of India had strongly rebuked the Enforcement Directorate for copy-pasting allegations from an earlier Chidambaram-related affidavit in its application seeking cancellation of bail granted to Karnataka Congress leader DK Shivakumar.
In fact, the ED had referred to Shivakumar as "former home minister" and "former finance minister" multiple times. Shivakumar is a seven-time MLA in Karnataka and has not yet held a ministerial position in the Government of India.
The court on Monday also clarified that nowhere in the Chidambaram order did it mention explicitly that the observations made in the paragraph in
question were of the INX Media case.
"Thus there is no cut and paste as alleged and I hereby make it clear that the observations made in Paragraph no. 35 shall be read as and are confined to the case of 'Rohit Tandon Vs Enforcement Directorate'," Justice Kait said in his latest order.
Interestingly, even before the court took suo motu cognizance of the matter, the Enforcement Directorate had filed an application in court, asking it to correct an "inadvertent error" in the Chidambaram order. The financial probe agency had said in its application that instead of recording the reproduced paragraphs as a citation, it had been made to look like it was part of the agency's factual submissions to the judiciary as an "accidental slip/inadvertent error".
"Inadvertently, it appears that the said factual portion of the judgment relied by the ED instead of being quoted or summarised as the part of the relied upon judgments, have been inadvertently/ accidently referred to in the order dated November 15 as the factual submissions made by the ED," the application read.
Meanwhile, Chidambaram has filed an appeal in the Supreme Court with respect to the bail denied to him by the High Court here in the ED's INX Media money-laundering case. Mentioning the matter before freshly minted Chief Justice SA Bobde, senior advocate Kapil Sibal noted that his 74-year-old client had already been in custody for 90 days and requested for an early hearing. CJI Bobde agreed to list the matter for Tuesday or Wednesday, saying "tomorrow or day after.".
If granted bail by the Apex court, Chidambaram would finally be able to go home. He was arrested by the CBI on August 21 from his Jor Bagh house and has either been in police custody of the agencies concerned or in judicial custody in Tihar Jail.
