Foreign funding: HC no to CBI probe against AAP and Kejriwal

The Delhi High Court today dismissed a plea seeking CBI probe into the funding of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in alleged violation of provisions of FCRA, saying a complaint is already being probed by an agency.
A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw also declined a request for registration of a criminal case against Delhi Chief Minster Arvind Kejriwal and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia under Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) and conducting day-to-day trial under high court supervision.
It also refused to look into the allegation of advocate M L Sharma through a PIL that the party, Kejriwal, Sisodia, former AAP members and advocate Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan were funded by the Central Intelligence Agency through companies and trusts.

"The petitioner (Sharma) has also not been able to make out a case of the likelihood of the investigation against the respondents being not fair and proper, owing to political factors or owing to the investigative agencies being under the administrative control of the respondents....
"In the present case, we do not find any reason as to why the investigative agencies to whom the petitioner has already complained would not look into or are not looking into the allegation or would not discover the truth," the bench said.
The court said it did not find any case or the need for any direction to be issued and dismissed the petition with clarification that "neither should the dismissal of this petition be considered as this court having expressed any view on the merits of the allegations of the petitioner nor should any observation herein be read as our having found any merit therein."

The court also took note of the Ministry of Home Affairs reply that nothing was found against AAP in its probe report regarding allegations that it had received offshore funds in violation of FCRA provisions.

The Intelligence Bureau (IB) report had also found nothing against AAP, the Centre had stated.
AAP had also said that the party has even written to the
Supreme Court to set up a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the funding of all major national and regional parties in the country.
Contending that Kejriwal and some of its members of receiving foreign funds, Sharma on February 4 this year had moved an application seeking CBI probe against the Home Ministry officials, who in their report had earlier stated that donations made by eight foreign residents to AAP, were not in violation of FCRA.

Brushing aside his contention, the bench in its nine-page order observed, "In our view, the courts would be justified in issuing such direction only if were to find prima facie an offence to have been committed and investigating agency, for whatsoever reason, unwilling to act lest investigate or if find the investigation though undertaken, to be not a fair one or when find the gravity of the offence prima facie found by the court to be such which requires investigation by a specialized agency, to restore public faith in the process of law."
In the facts of the present case we do not find either of the said requirements to have been met, it added.

The bench also said that from the perusal of the records produced before it, they found that the state "to have, in the context of each and every averment made in the present case, launched an inquiry/investigation in accordance with law".
Denying violation of foreign exchange or other laws, AAP had earlier contended that the PIL accusing it and its founding members of having illegally received foreign funding was "scandalous, frivolous, motivated and baseless".
AAP had claimed that it has "very small amount of funds and has the most transparent method of political funding among all parties".
The PIL had also alleged that "undisclosed funding to AAP was coming from terrorist groups" and that the party had succeeded in stalling Home Ministry probe against it and managed to get a favorable reply to mislead this court.

The ministry in its report had said that eight people with foreign addresses made donations to AAP and "their passport numbers as mentioned in the contribution report of EC were checked and it was found that they possess Indian passports and NRIs holding Indian passports are not a foreign source.