Delhi LG's notification triggers a storm, forces Amit Shah's intervention

After a lull of nearly seven months, Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena has found himself back at the centre of a controversy but with a twist that he wouldn’t have anticipated.

Often accused of creating administrative hurdles at the behest of the ruling BJP at the Centre when the AAP was in power in Delhi, Saxena had gradually stepped back from the spotlight ever since the BJP swept the Delhi Assembly polls in February this year. However, a notification issued by his office earlier this month has now unwittingly triggered a storm that has forced none other than Union Home Minister Amit Shah to intercede and soothe frayed nerves.

What is the controversy?

The controversy isn’t a purely political one nor has it got the BJP’s political rivals riled up. Rather, The Federal has learnt that the pushback has among its central figures a BJP Rajya Sabha MP, along with several lawyers known to share a cosy relationship with the saffron party, who have, both individually and collectively, petitioned Shah for help and sought a rap on Saxena’s knuckles.

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On August 13, a notification issued by the LG Office designated all 226 police stations in Delhi as venues police personnel could, henceforth, use to record evidence through video-conferencing during a criminal trial. In simple terms, the notification did away with the settled legal practice requiring the physical presence of police personnel in a courtroom during one of the most critical phases in a criminal trial – the recording of evidence and depositions by investigating officers.

On grounds of “improving efficiency and saving time”, the notification essentially empowered the police to simply log-in for a trial from the confines of any police station and record evidence virtually. The LG’s decision triggered an instant backlash from Delhi’s sizeable and influential legal fraternity, which saw the notification as being “against general public, the legal fraternity and the law itself”. Nearly every lawyers’ body in the national capital, including the Bar Council of India (BCI), which is headed by BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Manan Kumar Mishra, the Bar Associations of the Supreme Court and Delhi High Court, the Bar Council of Delhi and the All District Bar Associations of Delhi (ADBAD), among others, slammed the LG’s notification, urging Saxena for its withdrawal.

‘Notification is anti-public, anti-lawyer’

The Mishra-led body expressed “serious concern”, surprise and disappointment at the LG’s “arbitrary” notification, “issued without any consultation” with the BCI and other lawyers’ organisations. “When a witness testifies from a police station – a location under the control of the investigating agency – it can affect the spontaneity and credibility of their testimony,” the BCI said in a statement, urging withdrawal of the notification.

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The Delhi LG, however, chose to hold out, while Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta’s attempts at brokering truce with agitating lawyers yielded little. With Saxena sliding back into a mould reminiscent of the days when he would routinely issue controversial and obstructionist directions to the previous AAP regime and then brazen out the political storm these would trigger, various lawyers’ associations chose to launch street protests and ‘stop work’ agitations at Delhi’s district courts and High Court over the past week.

“The notification is anti-public, anti-lawyer and also against the law. It leaves wide open the scope for the entire process of recording of evidence to be compromised. When a police officer is physically present in the courtroom for recording evidence, the cross-examination is effective because it is spontaneous; the judge, the lawyers and everyone in the courtroom can see the body language of the cop and make out whether he is being honest with his testimony; there is no possibility of reading out from reference notes prepared by the police’s legal team and no scope of tutoring the witness while he is being cross-examined,” Deepak Tyagi, vice convenor of the coordination committee of ADBAD told The Federal.

“All of this goes out of the window with the LG’s notification because now the police officer can just log-in virtually, the camera will be on him, the court won’t know if he is reading out from notes or if someone is sitting in the room to help him with the deposition and if he still gets caught in a difficult situation he can fake some connectivity issue and just log out,” Tyagi added.

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Shivesh Garg, a lawyer practicing in district courts and the Delhi High Court, said the notification was “an assault on every principle of a fair trial” because it “completely compromises the entire process of recording evidence”.

Lawyers protest

With the LG still refusing to budge, lawyers gathered at Delhi’s Rouse Avenue Court, on Thursday (August 28) and began a protest march to the BJP office, waving black flags and carrying placards with slogans against Saxena. Amid fears that the protests could turn violent on Friday, when the lawyers had planned to hold a demonstration outside Saxena’s official residence, sources told The Federal that Mishra and several other senior advocates practicing in the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court frantically renewed their appeal to Shah to intercede and halt the notification from taking effect.

Late Thursday evening, the Delhi Police finally issued a statement saying, “concerns have been raised by members of the Bar in Delhi” regarding the LG’s notification and that “it has been decided that Union Home Minister would meet the representatives of the Bar to discuss the issue with an open mind... in the meantime, the operation of the said notification on the ground would be carried out after hearing all stakeholders”.

With Shah assuring the lawyers a hearing “with an open mind”, the agitating lawyers have, for now, called off their scheduled demonstration outside the LG House and also suspended the ‘stop work’ protests at Delhi’s district courts “till the final outcome of the discussions” with Shah. ADBAD chairman and advocate VK Singh, however, told The Federal that “nothing less than a complete withdrawal of the notification will be acceptable to the lawyers; the Home Minister must give us a written assurance that the notification will not come into effect”.