Guwahati:
Congress leader Digvijaya Singh today questioned the Supreme Court's monitoring of cases that are under trial in lower courts.
"A case which is to be tried in a lower court of an Additional District Judge (ADJ) after being chargesheeted, when the ADJ sees that this case if being monitored and supervised by the honourable Supreme Court, would he have the courage to say that the prosecution case is not correct? Would the accused get an impartial judgement?" Mr Singh told NDTV.
"There are 2000 cases that the CBI is investigating. How many cases will the honourable Supreme Court supervise? I am raising an issue which raises a question in my mind: whether it is justified or not. I may be wrong," the Congress leader added.
Mr Singh also said that the CBI should be left alone to do a professional job.
Earlier this week, Mr Singh had taken a dig at the Supreme Court over its observation that CBI was a "caged parrot". "Hon Supreme Court calls CBI a Parrot in a Cage, CAT calls Intelligence Bureau a Chicken. Are we not belittling our Institutions?" he tweeted on Monday.
The tweet drew immediate response from the Opposition party, the BJP. "I think it is important for him to look inwards for himself and his party, his leader and the PM. If the morale of the CBI has been downgraded it is only because of the rank abuse of the CBI by his government," BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
The Supreme Court last week had called the CBI "a caged parrot" that "speaks in its master's voice" after the investigating agency admitted in an affidavit that Ashwani Kumar, who recently quit as the Law Minister, and senior officials of the Prime Minister's Office and the Coal Ministry had made certain changes in the report on the allocation of coal blocks.
The Congress distanced itself from Mr Singh's comments, saying the top court's observations "should be taken seriously."
"I have not heard or seen what he has said. Digvijay Singh is a senior leader. Since he is such a big leader, if he has said something he must have said it with due deliberation... Only he can explain what he has said," party spokesperson Meem Afzal told reporters.