Decode Politics: SC relief to Congress’s D K Shivakumar; in his long race to be CM, one case down, others to go

Over three years after Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister and state Congress chief D K Shivakumar, and four associates, filed criminal pleas against an Enforcement Directorate (ED) money laundering case, the Supreme Court on March 5 granted relief to the Congress leader by setting aside the case.

The Supreme Court order is not public yet but the court reportedly cited its own Pavana Dibbur judgment from November 2023 to dismiss the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) case against Shivakumar.

“I would like to thank the judges for upholding justice,” Shivakumar said on March 5, adding, “I will comment on the ruling once I have more details of the order. I will soon reveal what all the CBI is doing even now. Let them file an appeal, I am ready to fight it out. I am confident that the more they trouble me, the more I will grow politically.”

What was the precedent referred to by the SC?

The PMLA charge, for which Shivakumar spent a month in Delhi’s Tihar Jail in 2019, was brought by the ED on the basis of an allegation that the Congress leader and his associates were part of a criminal conspiracy to evade income tax.

The Supreme Court had, however, ruled in the Pavana Dibbur case last year that PMLA charges require the involvement of a primary crime or scheduled offence, and that the Act cannot be invoked without criminal links to the allegedly laundered funds.

“The offence punishable under Section 120 B of the IPC (criminal conspiracy) will become a scheduled offence only if the conspiracy alleged is of committing an offence which is specifically included in the schedule,” the Supreme Court ruled in November 2023.

A special court in Delhi had taken cognisance of the ED’s PMLA case against Shivakumar in May 2022 to issue summons