SC rejects PIL challenging 2018 amendment to SC/ST Act

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to entertain a PIL challenging the constitutional validity of the 2018 amendment to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, which restored restrictions on anticipatory bail.

The amended law had also removed the requirement of a preliminary inquiry before registration of an FIR and prior approval before arrest. A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana rejected the petition filed by Brijbhushan Saini, saying that the amended provisions had already been upheld by the top court in 2020.

It also declined the submission of lawyer Vishnu Shankar Jain, appearing for Saini, that the 2020 verdict be reconsidered and said that adequate safeguards had already been laid down against possible misuse of the provisions.
Jain said that the statutory bar on anticipatory bail under the SC/ST Act amounted to “reverse discrimination” and contended that the provisions were susceptible to misuse.  The lawyer also referred to the low conviction rate in cases registered under the Act and questioned the manner in which compensation was being distributed under the statutory scheme.

Referring to a speech by a Rajya Sabha member, he alleged that Rs 493 crore had been distributed as compensation and said that such a mechanism could encourage the filing of FIRs.  He further said that Parliament, through the 2018 amendment, could not simply “validate” provisions that had earlier been diluted by the Supreme Court without curing the defects identified in the Court’s 2018 judgment. 

In its 2018 judgement, the top court had directed that a preliminary inquiry be conducted before registration of an FIR in certain circumstances under the SC/ST Act and required approval of the appointing authority before arrest of a public servant. It had also held that anticipatory bail could be granted in appropriate cases where no prima facie case was made out. Following the judgment, Parliament enacted the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act, 2018, inserting Section 18A into the legislation. 

Section 18A expressly provided that no preliminary inquiry would be required for registration of an FIR and that no prior approval would be necessary for arrest of an accused.  It also restored the statutory restriction on anticipatory bail under the Act.  The constitutional validity of the amendment was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court in Prithvi Raj Chauhan v. Union of India in 2020.