Instead, she said the High Court verdict should be confined to the limited question of whether the HC had jurisdiction or not to decide this “federal dispute”.
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The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a plea to restrain the high court from delivering its judgment on extent of power to be exercised by the Delhi government. “Once the matter is pending in the high court, then it shall decide the issue rightly or wrongly”.
Making it clear that bench would not entertain repeated pleas that the high court be asked to decide the preliminary issue of jurisdiction first before taking up other issues, Justice Misra said: “We must respect High Courts”.
The Supreme Court today refused to interfere with the proceedings before the Delhi High Court in the case between Delhi government and Union. Every court has its own authority and we will not tell the HC what to do.
Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the Centre, referred to an earlier order of the top court asking the Delhi High Court to finalise the matter by the end of July this year.
The Delhi government had appealed to the High Court to decide the preliminary issue of whether it had the jurisdiction over disputes between the Centre and the state or is it “exclusively” triable by the apex court.
The AAP government and the Centre have been locked horns over governance in Delhi for most of the party’s tenure, leading to the ruling party seeking the apex court’s intervention.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has not reacted over the issue, or on his Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar’s arrest, till now.
They had challenged a May 2015 notification of the ministry of home affairs, replacing a 1998 notification on the powers of the Lieutenant-Governor (L-G) and the Delhi government.
On Tuesday, following the arrest of a senior bureaucrat on charges of corruption, Sisodia had accused the Centre of wanting to run a parallel government in Delhi, and termed it a conspiracy.
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“There is already a suit pending in Supreme Court on this issue”.
