Chandigarh, December 7
While the legal team of the Badal family says that the actual hearing of the corruption case in the trial court will begin only after deciding “jurisdictional and other issues", the Chief Minister, Capt Amarinder Singh, today asserted that the hearing would be on a day-to-day basis.

"Right from the beginning, I have been saying that the Badals- Mr Parkash Singh Badal and his son, Mr Sukhbir Singh- should face the case in the trial court and not resort to delaying tactics by moving from one court to another. However, they continued to do so. As now the Supreme Court has dismissed their appeal, the hearing of the case will be held on a daily basis", he asserted.

Speaking to a group of mediapersons, Capt Amarinder Singh said "the Badals had been playing mischief from the day the corruption case of Rs 3,500 crore was registered against them". However, now all their pleas had been rejected by the apex court and the case was back to the trial court at Ropar. "We had requested the apex court that there will no objection from the state government if it wanted to shift the case to some court elsewhere", said Capt Amarinder Singh.

Asked to elaborate regarding the day-to-day hearing of the case, he said a Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court had given a judgement that this case should be dealt within a year or so. “ The case now will be heard in the light of that judgement “, he added.

However, the legal team of the Badals says that the issue to be decided first was whether it was within the jurisdiction of the Ropar court to hear this case or not.” We will be first raising the jurisdiction issue on December 24, the day the case will come up for hearing at Ropar. This issue is pending decision in the trial court”, said a member of the legal team. “And there will be a legal option before us to contest this issue up to the apex court level”, he added.

He said the apex court in its judgement yesterday had stated that certain issues such as mala fide intention of the state government should be raised at the trial court level. And if the trial court dismissed the plea in this regard, an appeal could be filed in the higher court, he added.” The Amarinder Singh government had become vindictive against the Badals. Owing to this reason the issue of sanction was pursued up to the apex court”, he said. As the Code of Conduct was likely to become operative in the last week of December or the first week of January, the Amarinder Singh government would not be able to resort to vendetta, he added.

That means another prolonged legal battle between the Amarinder Singh government and the Badals is on the cards in the months to come.

However, what will matter the most is the political attack to be mounted by Capt Amarinder Singh against the Badals in the light of the dismissal of their appeal by the apex court and how that attack is warded off by the Badals to save themselves from political harm. Capt Amarinder Singh is a shrewd strategist. He is capable of giving a big political spin to the entire matter. He has already started saying that Mr Parkash Singh Badal’s appeal in the corruption has been dismissed and he ( Badal) had been told to face the case in the trial court. Capt Amarinder Singh is aware that few will be interested in knowing about the technical details of the case.