Rahul Gandhi to visit poll-bound Madhya Pradesh Saturday
Morena/Jabalpur, Oct 5 : Congress president Rahul Gandhi will be on a day-long tour of Madhya Pradesh Saturday, during which he will attend an event organised by a tribal organisation and also address a public meeting.
Gandhi will tour Morena and Jabalpur in what will be his third visit to the poll-bound state in less than 20 days.
He will arrive at Gwalior in the morning by a special plane and later, leave for Morena in a helicopter. He will address a meeting of the Adivasi Ekta Parishad at the Ambedkar Stadium in Morena, a party spokesman said Friday.
A large number of people under the banner of the Adivasi Ekta Parishad have embarked on a foot march from Gwalior on October 2 (Gandhi Jayanti), seeking land rights for tribals and farmers. The march will conclude in New Delhi.
"We have embarked on a foot march from Gwalior on October 2 for Delhi. The Congress president will arrive at Morena tomorrow to listen to our problems and to tell us how these problems will be solved in the event of his party coming to power at the Centre," Adivasi Ekta Parishad's national convener P V Rajgopal said.
"This is the Ekta Parishad's third yatra from Gwalior to Delhi," he added.
Rajgopal said the parishad had sent an invitation to the Congress as it is the main opposition party. Gandhi accepted the invitation and is coming to address the agitators.
Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh, Madhya Pradesh Congress president Kamal Nath and the party's state-level poll campaign committee chairman Jyotiraditya Scindia will be present on the occasion among others.
After this, Gandhi will go to Jabalpur, perform "Narmada puja" at the Gwari Ghat and embark on a roadshow from the Bandria Tiraha (tri-section) to the Abdul Hameed Tiraha, the spokesman said.
Congressmen have put up posters, banners and set up nearly 100 temporary stages on both sides of the eight-km-long roadshow route.
Gandhi will also address a public meeting at the Raddi Chowk in the city, the spokesman added.
Elaborate security arrangements have been made in view of the Congress chief's visit.
Gandhi had earlier visited Bhopal and Rewa-Satna in the Vindhya region. Morena and Jabalpur fall in the Chambal and Mahakaushal regions respectively.
The Assembly polls in the state, where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power since 2003, are due by the year-end.
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Umar Khalid seeks review of SC verdict denying him bail, prays for open-court hearing
New Delhi, Apr 13 (PTI): Student activist Umar Khalid has moved the Supreme Court seeking a review of a verdict that denied him bail while observing that there were reasonable grounds to believe the allegations levelled against him in connection with the conspiracy behind the 2020 Delhi riots.
A bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and N V Anjaria was requested by senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who appeared in the court for Khalid, to list the review petition in open court.
Sibal said the matter is coming up for consideration before the judges in chambers on April 16 and they have filed an application for an open-court hearing.
Justice Kumar said, "We will look into the papers. If required, we will call it."
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According to the Supreme Court's rules, review petitions are considered by judges who delivered a judgment or passed an order in chambers to remedy an apparent error or a resultant grave injustice that has been the consequence of a decision of the apex court. Parties seeking a review can request judges for an open-court hearing to rectify the grave injustice caused due to the decision under review.
On January 5, Besides Khalid, the top court had refused bail to Sharjeel Imam but granted it to five others, saying all the accused do not stand on the same footing.
Khalid and Imam, who have been incarcerated since 2020, can file fresh bail pleas after the examination of protected witnesses or after a year from the day the order was passed, the court had said, as it rejected their contention of a delay in the trial.
There was a prima-facie case against Khalid and Imam under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), the top court had said, noting that prosecution material suggests that they were involved in the "planning, mobilisation and strategic direction" of the riots.
While the two will remain in jail, activists Gulfisha Fatima, Meeran Haider, Shifa Ur Rehman, Mohammad Saleem Khan and Shadab Ahmad were given bail by the court, which had imposed 11 conditions and said any misuse of liberty would lead to cancellation of bail.
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The court had noted that the guarantee of liberty enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution is of foundational importance, but at the same time, the security of a community, the integrity of a trial process and the preservation of public order are equally legitimate constitutional concerns.
Khalid and Imam stand on qualitatively-different footing as compared to the other accused, the court had said.
The prosecution had prima facie disclosed "a central and formative role" and "involvement in the level of planning, mobilisation and strategic direction extending beyond episodic and localised acts", the bench had said.
The February 2020 riots in northeast Delhi broke out during protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), leaving 53 people dead and more than 700 injured.
The Delhi Police had arrested a total of 18 people in the conspiracy case. Of them, 11 have got bail so far.
The apex court's January order had said a delay in the trial does not operate as a "trump card" that automatically displaces statutory safeguards.
"All the appellants do not stand on equal footing as regards culpability. The hierarchy of participation emerging from the prosecution's case requires the court to examine each application individually," it had said, adding that the roles attributed to them were different.
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"This court is satisfied that the prosecution material disclosed a prima-facie allegation against the appellants, Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam.... This stage of proceedings does not justify their enlargement on bail," the apex court had said.
It had cited section 43D(5) of the UAPA, which requires the court to deny bail if, on a perusal of a case diary or a chargesheet, it finds that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accusation against such a person is prima-facie true.
Imam was arrested on January 28, 2020, for speeches made during anti-CAA protests. He was later arrested in the larger conspiracy case in August 2020.
Khalid was arrested on September 13, 2020, on charges of delivering provocative speeches on February 24 and 25 when Donald Trump, in his first term as the president of the United States, had visited India.
Strongly opposing the bail pleas, the Delhi Police had then contended that the riots were not spontaneous but an orchestrated, pre-planned and well-designed attack on India's sovereignty.
All seven accused were booked under the stringent anti-terror UAPA and provisions of the Indian Penal Code for allegedly being the "masterminds" of the riots.
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