A bench of justices Deepak Verma and Gyan Sudha Misra agreed to consider the plea after Additional Solicitor General Mohan Parasaran said the issue needs to be examined at length as it involved serious questions of law and national security.
The Centre made the plea after the court's registry had on August 30 declined to list the matter on the ground that the the government's recall application was not maintainable as it was virtually an appeal against the February 10, 2011 order.
In February last year, a bench of justices Markandeya Katju (since retd) and Gyan Sudha Mishra had ruled that "the Constitution is the highest law of the land and no statute can violate it. If there is a statute which appears to violate it, we can either declare it unconstitutional or we can read it down to make it constitutional. The first attempt of the court should be to try to sustain the validity of the statute by reading it down."
"Similarly, we are of the opinion that the provisions in various statutes i.E., Section 3(5)of TADA or Section 10 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) which in their plain language make mere membership of a banned organisation criminal have to be read down and we have to depart from the literal rule of interpretation in such cases. Otherwise, these provisions will become unconstitutional as violative of Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution," the apex court had said.
The bench had made the remarks while acquitting Indra Das, an ULFA activist, sentenced to five years in jail by a designated anti-terror court in Assam for being the member of the banned insurgents' outfit. (More)
