NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear on May 3 the Centre’s review petition challenging its March 20 verdict on implementation of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act to prevent harassment to the innocents.
The Bench of Justices A K Goel and Deepak Gupta, which delivered the judgment dubbed by critics as dilution of the law protecting the SCs and STs, fixed the hearing on a mention by Attorney General K K Venugopal for an early hearing.
Venugopal told the Court that the Centre had already filed the written submission in the matter as sought by the Court on April 2 and so have four other states have filed their review petitions.
In the last hearing, the Court had refused to stay its order nor felt any urgency for the hearing on review of its judgment putting safeguards on the provisions of immediate arrest under the Act.
Three BJP-ruled states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh had ordered implementation of the verdict by police. They, however, changed the instance and filed the review petitions as also did the AIADMK-ruled Tamil Nadu.
The government, in its review petition, has taken the stand that the Supreme Court verdict violates Article 21 of the Constitution for the SC/ST communities. The verdict puts the safeguards on the ground that on several occasions the innocent citizens were made accused and public servants deterred from performing their duties, which can never the intention of Parliament while enacting the Atrocities Act.
