Charging the union home minister with playing vote bank politics, Jaitley says in his blog, “A move that only a certain category of cases would be reviewed on the eve of election is intended to link the otherwise uniform application of criminal law with vote bank politics.”
“Such a move is clearly unconstitutional. Article 14 guarantees to every citizen a right to equality. There can be a reasonable classification based on an intelligible and distinctive criteria.
“The criteria that the facility of reviewing terror cases would be extended to persons depending on which faith they believe in or are born into is clearly unconstitutional. A crime does not cease to be a crime because a criminal practices in a particular faith,” Jaitley further added.
“States are now being mandated by the Union Home Ministry to review cases of only persons belonging to a certain faith. An atheist, agnostic and believers in the Hindu faith would admittedly be kept out. A contradiction would also be there.
The believers of Hindu faith would constitute a minority in Jammu & Kashmir and certain States of North-East. Would they be eligible for review in these States or would the majority in these States be treated as national minority and be eligible for review of cases?
