SC rejects urgent hearing on Karti Chidambaram's plea seeking abroad travel

The top court had allowed Karti Chidambaram to travel to the UK between September 20 and September 30, despite the ED's objection

The Supreme Court on Thursday declined an urgent hearing on a plea by senior Congress leader P Chidambaram's son Karti Chidambaram, who is facing several criminal cases, seeking its permission to go abroad.

Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi, who had made it clear on his first day in office on October 3 that urgent mentioning of cases will not be allowed unless they pertain to matters like hanging or eviction, again refused most of such pleas of lawyers on Thursday.

The CJI declined the request of a lawyer seeking urgent hearing on the plea of Karti saying, "Karti Chidambaram going abroad is not so important that it will get precedence over other (cases)."

The bench, also comprising justices U U Lalit and K M Joseph, then referred to the work-load of apex court judges and said , "All judges have more work than they can handle. They have 20 hours of homework."

When the lawyer for Karti insisted, the CJI said, "Going out of India is not an important matter to be taken up tomorrow. Ask him (Karti) to stay in India."

Earlier, the apex court had accorded urgent hearing to Karti several times on his pleas seeking permission to go abroad.

The top court had allowed Karti Chidambaram to travel to the UK between September 20 and September 30, despite the Enforcement Directorate's (ED) objection that he has been "blatantly misusing" the liberty granted to him by the court to protract the investigation in the case.

The ED had said the liberty granted to Karti Chidambaram by the apex court is "blatantly and brazenly hampering, subverting, jeopardising and protracting" the probe pending against him in the Aircel Maxis case, which the agency has to complete in six months.

Prior to this, the apex court had allowed Karti to visit the UK, France and the US from July 23 to 31, while making it clear that he has to abide by the conditions imposed by it in an earlier similar order.

Karti Chidambaram has been facing several criminal cases including in connection with the grant of Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance in the INX-Media case.

In the INX Media case, the CBI had registered an FIR on May 15 last year against alleged irregularities in the FIPB clearance to INX Media for receiving overseas funds to the tune of Rs 3.05 billion in 2007 when P Chidambaram was the Union finance minister.