Choose between minister post and freedom, Supreme Court tells Senthil Balaji

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday told Tamil Nadu Minister Senthil Balaji that he must choose between retaining his post and remaining out on bail in the money laundering case linked to the ‘cash-for-jobs’ scam.

"You have to make a choice between the post (Minister) and freedom. What choice you want to make," a bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Augustine George Masih asked his counsel senior advocate Kapil Sibal.

The court granted Balaji time till April 28 to decide upon it, pointing out that the bail was not granted to him on merits of the matter.

The court was hearing the applications filed by the Enforcement Directorate and others seeking to recall the bail granted to Balaji on the grounds that he was influencing the witnesses in the case.

The court had on September 26, 2024 granted bail to Balaji. He took the oath as a Minister in DMK government on September 29.

The court subsequently expressed its displeasure and serious concern as to how Balaji was reappointed as a Cabinet Minister.

On Tuesday, the bench questioned his conduct and his reappointment by referring to the observations in a previous judgment which recorded that as a Minister, he had forced people to withdraw the complaints and the role played in the predicate offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The court pointed out it had granted bail to him only on the grounds of delay in trial and long incarceration.

The court was concerned about the misuse of Supreme Court's liberal stand on bail in PMLA cases.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta also said Balaji was granted bail not on merits, but on the ground of Article 21 violation.

However, Sibal said that the trial can be shifted out of the State if there was an apprehension of influence by him.

The court asked what signals the Supreme Court would be sending if such a person is allowed to be on bail, despite the categorical findings in the earlier judgment about the role played by him in the predicate offence.

The court also pointed out that his resignation as a Minister was cited as a "change in circumstances" to plead for bail before the High Court, however, soon after bail was granted by the Supreme Court, he took oath as a Minister.

"There are findings and judgement of this court attributing role to him in the predicate offence as Minister. Can we ignore that? What signals are we sending," the bench asked.

The bench said it would say that it made a mistake by ignoring the previous judgment, which had recorded findings against Balaji.

"We will record it in the order that we have made a mistake by ignoring the judgements against you, because the entire hearing proceeded on the footing that he is no longer minister. We will accept our mistake," the bench said.

Sibal insisted that there was no chance of Balaji influencing witnesses.

"There is no witness coming in the box, how will I influence," Sibal asked.

"You are preventing them from coming," the bench retorted.

"What troubles us is for the first time in case of PMLA we have applied a law that if case is not going to commence we will grant bail. When we read the order of the trial court and high court we were told that he is no longer minister. Therefore we ignored the allegation based on the judgements on the ground that he is no longer minister. Now you bring about a change within few days of order granting bail and he is again the minister," the bench said.

The bench said this is not the way to deal with the court.

"After that don't blame us that this court is not liberal in granting bail. You know how difficult it is to get bail in PMLA," the bench told Sibal.