By IANS
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Monday gave the Delhi and Uttar Pradesh governments four more weeks to resolve the issue of parallel probes by their police into the case of tapping Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh’s telephonic conversations.
A bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Justice R.V. Raveendran and Justice J.M. Panchal gave more time to the two states after Additional Solicitor General Amrendra Saran informed the court that Uttar Pradesh Governor T.V. Rajeshwar and Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor Tejendra Khanna were in talks over the issue but needed more time to resolve it.
Following the submission by the central government’s law officer, the bench adjourned the matter.
In 2006, the apex court bench headed by then Chief Justice Y.K. Sabharwal had disapproved the parallel probes and asked the two governments to resolve the issue.
Saran apprised the court of the ongoing dialogue between the constitutional heads of the two states during the hearing of an appeal filed by the Uttar Pradesh government challenging a Delhi High Court decision of January 2006 to launch contempt of court proceedings against senior police officials of the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force.
The high court had restrained the Uttar Pradesh police from interfering into the probe by Delhi Police, but the Uttar Pradesh police had continued its investigations saying it was not interfering into the Delhi Police probe but merely investigating another first information report (FIR) filed by the Noida police on the phone tapping.
While purportedly investigating the case registered at Noida, the Uttar Pradesh police had issued summons to Delhi government’s Principal Secretary (Home) R. Narayanswami and Delhi Police Joint Commissioner Ranjit Narayan to interrogate them in this case.
It was against the summons that Delhi Police moved the high court, which had restrained the Uttar Pradesh police from executing their summons. The high court also issued notices to the Uttar Pradesh police for launching contempt of court proceedings against its senior officers.