New Bill to Make Judges and Public Servants Immune From Court's Investigation, Rajasthan Government

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in Rajasthan is expected to come up with a Bill in the assembly session that starts Monday to replace an ordinance that prevents the courts from ordering an investigation against “a judge or a magistrate or a public servant” for an act they may have committed while in office without its prior sanction.

This means that the government has made itself immune against any probe.

The ordinance said, “No magistrate shall order an investigation nor will any investigation be conducted against a person, who is or was a judge or a magistrate or a public servant as defined under any law for the time being in force, in respect of the act done by them while acting or purporting to act in the discharge of their official duties, except with previous sanction under section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPc), 1973.”

The bill also seeks to bar the media from reporting on such allegations against the public servants until the prosecution gets sanction from the sanctioning authority to proceed with the probe. “Provided also that no one shall print or publish or publicize in any manner the name, address, photograph, family details, or any other particulars, which may lead to disclosure of identity of a judge or a magistrate or a public servant against whom any proceeding under this section is pending, until the sanction as aforesaid has been or deemed to have been issued.”

The ordinance wants to amend sections 156 (3) and 190 (1) of the CrPc, which empowers a magistrate to take cognizance of an offence and order an investigation.

The state government will introduce The Code of Criminal Procedure (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill to replace The Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance, 2017, promulgated on September 7. However, the process of getting a thumbs-up on the Bill may take up to six months. This empowers the sanctioning authority to take a decision in six months, from the date of the receipt of the proposal for sanction.

A new section (228-B - Disclosure of identity of certain public servants in the Indian Penal Code) that says, “Whoever contravenes the provisions of the fourth proviso of sub-section (3) of section 156, and fourth proviso of sub-section 190… shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years and shall also be liable to fine.”

Defending the ordinance, a senior leader of the state BJP, on the condition of anonymity, told NewsClick, “Section 156 (CrPC) that empowers a magistrate to order an investigation is being misused against government officials with an ulterior motive. To prevent this, a strong law was needed.”

When asked about gagging the media, he said the image of public servants suffer a blow to their reputation when the media begins reporting about allegations against them that have not been proven yet.