Double whammy for Cong as HC dismisses pleas of AJL, Ramesh

In a double whammy for the Congress, the Delhi High Court on Thursday dismissed the plea of AJL, publisher of the National Herald, against the order to vacate its premises and that of its senior leader Jairam Ramesh, who had challenged the amendments made by the NDA government to the money-laundering law since 2015.

The first setback to the opposition party came in the morning hours when a bench comprising Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice V K Rao rejected the appeal filed by the Associated Journals Ltd (AJL) against a single-judge order, saying there was misuse of the lease conditions for the land on which the Herald House stood.

The bench held that the entire transaction of transferring AJL's shares to the Young Indian (YI) company, in which Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi were the majority shareholders, was a "clandestine and surreptitious transfer of the lucrative interest in the premises" to YI.

Hours later, in the post-lunch session, the same bench dismissed Ramesh's plea challenging the amendments made to the money-laundering law since 2015, saying he had not been able to justify the delay in filing the petition.

The Congress leader had contended that the amendments to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) were made in violation of the Constitution as those were enacted as money bills and he had come to know about it only recently.

The court said Ramesh had not been able to answer the Centre's contention that he had no locus to challenge the amendments as he was not affected or aggrieved by those.

"We do not think that it is a case where this court should exercise its extraordinary jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution of India," the bench said and dismissed the plea.

The Congress had taken the service of top senior lawyers like A M Singhvi, Vivek Tankha and P Chidambaram in the two cases respectively.

Ramesh, a Rajya Sabha MP, in his plea had said that prior to the present regime at the Centre, such amendments were part of an ordinary bill.

A money bill is a piece of legislation that can only be introduced in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha cannot amend or reject it. The Upper House of Parliament can only make recommendations, which may or may not be accepted by the Lower House.

AJL had challenged the Centre's October 30, 2018 order ending its 56-year-old lease and asking it to vacate the premises at ITO here in the heart of the national capital, on the ground that no printing or publishing activity was going on and the building was only being used for commercial purposes.

The Centre and the Land and Development Office (L&DO) had said in their order that no press had been functioning on the premises for at least 10 years and the building was only being used for commercial purposes in violation of the lease deed.

AJL had denied the allegations in the petition filed in the high court.