Maharashtra police never sought Speaker’s permission to prosecute MLAs

Moneylife: Pune: Saturday, March 15, 2014.

Over the past 10 years, Maharashtra and Mumbai police never applied for any permission from the Speaker to prosecute any MLAs for any offence, reveals an RTI.

Investigative agencies in Maharashtra have to seek permission of the Speaker if it wants to prosecute any member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) for an offence. It has come to notice now that over the past 10 years, neither Maharashtra nor Mumbai police have ever applied for permission from the Speaker to prosecute an MLA! This information has been revealed in a reply to a query filed by Right to Information (RTI) activist Anil Galgali.

As per media reports, former commissioner Dr Satyapal Singh had announced that the Mumbai Police has sought permission from the Speaker to prosecute MLA and former minister of state for home, Kripashankar Singh in a disproportionate assets case filed some time back. However, according to the RTI reply, received by Galgali, there was no such correspondence in this case.

Galgali said many times, police claims that they are waiting for a reply from the Speaker on their application and once it is received, they would proceed with prosecution of public representatives.

In his RTI application, Galgali requested the Speaker’s office to provide info about the number of cases in which the police has sought permission to prosecute a public representative.

In the reply to the query, Umesh Shinde, desk officer at the Maharashtra Legislative Secretariat informed that “Nil Permissions were sought.” Galgali also sought to know what kind of proposals for sanctions to prosecute are needed to be sent to the Speaker, and which cases do not require permission of Speaker to prosecute any MLA. In the reply to this query also was given as “Nil.”

This is contrary to claims often made by police about prosecuting MLAs.

Anil Galgali had sought information on the same subject from Mumbai and Maharashtra Police also. In reply to the query, ACP (Coordination), Mumbai Police said that they have transferred and referred the query to Maharashtra Legislative Secretariat. On behalf of Maharashtra Police, its Public Information Officer DD Phadke replied that they have no records of the information sought. It is significant to note here that as per a survey by an NGO almost 146 MLA's & 26 MP's have criminal records in Maharashtra.