First court appearance since arrest as Amritpal presents case in High Court, seeks Parliament permission

Chandigarh (The Uttam Hindu): Amritpal Singh, MP from Khadoor Sahib, Punjab, and a Khalistan supporter, appeared in the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Tuesday for a hearing on his bail plea. This was the first public photo of him since he was detained under the National Security Act (NSA) in 2023. Due to a lawyers' strike, Amritpal presented his case in person via video conferencing, telling the court that his imprisonment was severely impacting development work in his constituency.

Amritpal Singh, lodged in Assam's Dibrugarh Central Jail, presented his arguments before a bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Sanjiv Berry. He sought permission from the court to attend the ongoing Parliament session so that he could raise issues such as the floods in Punjab, the drug problem, and MPLAD funds for his constituency. Amritpal told the bench that in the Indian democratic system, an elected representative has the right to raise issues related to his constituency in Parliament, but he is not even being granted conditional bail. He said that the charges against him have been exaggerated, whereas as an MP, he should be given the opportunity to present his views in the House.

Amritpal has also challenged the order extending his detention on constitutional grounds. He argued in court that the cases cited by the Punjab government for extending the NSA are untenable. He argued that the government's dossier mentions some incidents that occurred while he was already in jail, making his involvement in those incidents impossible. Amritpal called the statements of police witnesses contradictory and said that the state government had completely failed to prove why such a stringent measure as preventive detention was necessary in his case.