The Supreme Court Wednesday dismissed Rajasthan BJP MLA Kanwarlal Meena’s petition challenging the High Court order which had “immediately” in a 2005 case for threatening a Rajasthan Administrative Service (RAS) officer with a revolver.
Dismissing the MLA’s petition and granting him two weeks’ time to surrender, a Bench of Justice Vikram Nath, Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Sandeep Mehta said: “We are not inclined to interfere with the impugned judgment and order.”
The SC said that if Meena, the MLA from Anta in Baran district, doesn’t surrender by then, “the state will be at liberty to take all such measures to take him into custody to serve out the remaining sentence.”
The SC dismissing Meena’s petition effectively means that Meena is set to lose his MLA status. As per Section 8(3) of the Representation of the People (RP) Act of 1951, conviction of a lawmaker for an offence with a two-year sentence or more leads to disqualification from the House.
In oral remarks, the SC, while criticising the public representatives for treating public servants “like dirt”, said: “Elected representatives need to discipline themselves…this is one of those rare cases where somebody has been convicted otherwise you do everything and anything and get away with it, without any action against you.”
Meena’s lawyer Namit Saxena argued that he did not commit any crime and that the facts of the case were “exaggerated.”
The case pertains to February 2005, when Ramniwas Mehta, then a RAS officer and posted as Sub Divisional Officer, Aklera, was informed of a group of people in Manohar Thana, Jhalawar, blocking the road to demand re-poll in a sarpanch election.
When Mehta and others reached the spot, Meena, who arrived with 6-7 men in a vehicle about half an hour later, took out a revolver and allegedly aimed it at Mehta’s head asking him to “announce a re-poll within two minutes or get killed”.
Mehta, as per records, told Meena that, “a revolver can kill but not enforce a re-poll.”
On Wednesday, Meena’s lawyer Namit Saxena said: “There was no recovery of the revolver. The allegation is that he took out the videographer’s cassette and broke it and burnt it. There is no videography camera recovered, no CD or cassette recovered, and no public property which was recovered for the purpose of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property (PDPP) Act.”
Appearing for the respondent, senior advocate S Murlidhar pointed out that Meena “has 27 cases against him, of which 15 were even before the said incident. After this case, 12 more cases were filed.” He said that after this case, five more cases of attacks on public servants were lodged against Meena, terming this as Meena’s “specialization.”
Meena, a two-term BJP legislator, had initially been acquitted by a trial court but was later convicted by an appellate court in December 2020. He had then filed a criminal revision petition in the HC against his appellate court conviction which found him guilty under IPC Sections 353 (assault or criminal force to deter a public servant), 506 (criminal intimidation), and the PDPP Act. He was sentenced to three years’ rigorous imprisonment for the last two charges and two years for IPC 353, to be served concurrently.
On May 2, the Rajasthan HC upheld Meena’s 2020 conviction and sentence handed down by the appellate court, and directed him to surrender immediately in the case. Then on May 5, a single bench of the SC stayed a part of the HC order and the case was on Wednesday put up before a larger bench.
On May 5, Leader of Opposition Tika Ram Jully had led a delegation, which included Congress state president Govind Singh Dotasra, Deputy LoP Ramkesh Meena, Chief Whip Rafeek Khan, among others, to Assembly Speaker Vasudev Devnani, submitting a letter to an official in Devnani’s absence.
In his letter, Jully cited Section 8(3) of the RP Act, demanding Meena’s disqualification, while adding that such a person cannot contest for six years after the date of completion of his sentence. Attaching a copy of the HC order, Jully said that it is important to cancel his membership “to maintain the dignity and the democratic values of the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly.” Meena first won election from Manohar Thana in 2013 and from Anta in 2023. Meanwhile, Mehta is now an IAS officer and serves as Secretary, Rajasthan Public Service Commission, Ajmer.
