Hooda questions maintainability of ED's plea in high court

Nearly a year after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court challenging the PMLA special court’s order staying the trial proceedings against a former CM, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, and others, his counsel claimed that the petition was not maintainable.

Appearing before Justice Tribhuvan Dahiya’s Bench, senior counsel RS Cheema contended that the ED’s petition was not maintainable as only four of 22 accused had been impleaded as party to the petition. “In case the petition is allowed, all of them would be affected,” he added.

The Bench was also told that impugned order was passed on an application filed not by Hooda, but some other accused. Hooda had not filed the application seeking stay. The ED arrayed him as a party, while not impleading all other accused.

Additional Solicitor-General of India SV Raju and special counsel Zoheb Hossain in ED’s behalf sought “a short accommodation to get instructions in that regard”. The case will now come up for hearing on October 28.

Among other things, the ED in its plea submitted that the matter pertained to allotment of industrial plots. Hooda, the then chairman of HUDA, kept the file with himself for finalisation of allotment criteria for a long duration. He misused his official position and changed the criteria on January 24, 2016, after the January 6, 2016, deadline for inviting the applications.

It was added that the allotment of plots was not made in accordance to the proposed criteria. It was changed after the deadline had elapsed and the plots were allotted to ineligible applicants in a wrongful manner.

The ED added that a prosecution complaint was filed before the special court at Panchkula in 2021 after conducting through investigation under the provisions of PMLA. The court took cognisance, but, vide the impugned order dated May 15, paused the PMLA trial case proceedings "till the filing of the final report by the CBI".

Going into the grounds for challenging the order, the ED said the special judge erroneously ignored the fact that the money laundering offence was independent and separate. As such, the stay on trial proceedings, on the basis of stay on the proceedings related to the scheduled offence, was bad in law.

It was added that there was no embargo on continuing the trial proceedings under the PMLA pending the filing of the final report by the "predicate agency" as it is "imbibed in the scheme of PMLA that the trial for the offence of money laundering and scheduled offences are separate and independent of each other".

The plea added that halting the trial would have serious consequences on pending PMLA trials across the country. This would lead to thwarting of meritorious money laundering cases at the threshold and would adversely impact the interest of the directorate”.