How low he can stoop: SC slams Manoj Tiwari for taking 'law in his hands'

The Supreme Court Wednesday closed contempt proceedings against BJP MP Manoj Tiwari for breaking the civic agency's seal on premises in New Delhi in September even as it slammed him for levelling frivolous allegations against the court-mandated committee, saying it shows how "low he can stoop".

The court, however, reprimanded him severely, calling him a “rebel without a cause” and termed his action “misplaced bravado”.  

A bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur said the court was "extremely pained" due to his conduct as he is an elected representative and deprecated his action of taking law into his own hands.

The bench said Tiwari levelled frivolous allegations against court-mandated committee on sealing, which shows how "low he can stoop".

The apex court also said that "misplaced political propaganda has no place" and "such practices should be deprecated".

Tiwari, a member of parliament from Northeast Delhi, had broken the lock of a house sealed by EDMC in his constituency on September 16. The property in question housed an illegal dairy owing to which it was locked by the authorities. Tiwari had later justified breaking the lock and questioned as to why only one house had been sealed when there were 1,000 other such houses in the locality.

Taking note of a complaint of the Supreme Court set-up monitoring committee, the top court had on September 19 issued contempt notice against him and slammed him for taking law into his own hands. It had also asked him to come up with the list of 1,000 unauthorised properties and offered to make him the sealing officer.

Though Tiwari later said he did not mean to disrespect the court, he justified his action by saying it was forced to do a “symbolic affirmative protest” against the sealing as the monitoring committee had overstepped its jurisdiction. 

An FIR was also lodged against Tiwari by the EDMC for allegedly breaking the seal of the premises in Gokalpuri area in north-east Delhi on September 16.

The court had on October 30 reserved its order after hearing arguments in the matter during which Tiwari had accused the court-mandated monitoring committee of "terrorising" people of Delhi.

The panel, however, had claimed that he was trying to make the court a "political battleground".

Tiwari had claimed before the top court that monitoring committee has exceeded its jurisdiction and conducted sealing drive in unauthorised colonies here that were protected under the law.

Tiwari's counsel had said a mob of around 1,500 people had gathered at the spot and if the MP had not broken the seal in a "token protest", any untoward incident could have happened there.

He had also argued that there was no violation of the top court order in the matter, as projected by the committee.

The top court had earlier ordered restoration of its 2006 monitoring committee to identify and seal unauthorised structures in Delhi.

The monitoring committee, comprising K J Rao, former advisor to the Election Commissioner, Bhure Lal, chairman of Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority, and Major General (Retd) Som Jhingan, was set up on March 24, 2006, by the top court.