A bench of Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, Justices R V Raveendran and J M Panchal said the matter would be placed before a constitution bench after the summer vacation. 

In the meantime, the bench asked six states-- Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Orissa-- to file their responses in four weeks to the petition seeking direction for removing the tainted politicians from the Ministry of the states.

Manoj Narula filed a petition two years ago challenges the inclusion of Lalu Prasad Yadav, Taslimuddin, Fatmi, Premchand Gupta and some others MPs in the Union cabinet who were facing certain criminal cases.

The petition says that appointment of such persons in the Council of Ministers at the Centre and the states amounted to criminalisation of politics.

In its response to the petition, the Centre had told the court last year that under the Constitutional scheme a minister charged by a court with committing serious offence couldn’t be asked to resign from the public office.
Solicitor General (SG) Goolam E Vahanvati had said there couldn’t be an inquiry into the existence of such convention as it was not raised in the pleadings and more so because it could only be decided by a five-judge Constitution Bench.

However, advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, who is assisting the court in this case, had wondered whether there’s indeed a Constitutional convention that ministers charged with serious offence should resign from office.
Vahanvati's reply was that “conventions play an important role, particularly in an unwritten Constitution, in controlling the exercise called Parliamentary prerogative”.

The SG also said that the convention has to emanate from the Parliamentary institution and the courts couldn’t enforce it.

Dwivedi said that there ought to be a categorical convention that a person should not continue as minister on being charge sheeted and gave an instance of the Chief Minister of a state who resigned when he was to face trial in criminal case but later became a minister at Centre.

Zee tv told to apologise

New Delhi, dhns: New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave two weeks to Zee TV and its reporter to tender unconditional apology for tarnishing the image of the judiciary by carrying out a sting operation allegedly showing corruption in the lower courts.

A bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan said it was not satisfied with the affidavit filed by them and asked the channel and the reporters to submit unconditional apology in an affidavit by the next date of hearing.
In a sting operation “Cash for warrant scam” in 2004, the channel had shown that three advocates of Ahmedabad allegedly taking Rs 40,000 for securing bailable warrants against the then President APJ Abdul Kalam, the then Chief Justice of India VN Khare, the then apex court Judge Justice BP Singh and Senior Counsel late RK Jain.

The journalist Vijay Shekar, a reporter of Zee, who did the sting operation, then filed a PIL in the SC seeking CBI inquiry into the alleged corruption in the lower judiciary, exposed by the operation. The apex court had quashed all the warrants and directed CBI investigation into the matter.