Supreme Court admits Suresh Kalmadi's petition against High Court's order

The Supreme Court on Monday admitted a petition by Suresh Kalmadi challenging the legality of the Delhi High Court order that had restrained the sacked CWG Organising Committee chief from going to London to attend the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games.

On the plea filed by Kalmadi, a bench of justices H L Dattu and C K Prasad issued notice and sought the response of an advocate on whose PIL, he had been restrained from travelling to London to attend the event on July 27.

Kalmadi's lawyer said the appeal filed by the Congress leader and sports administrator in-principle contended that the order restraining him from travelling to London was an infringement of his fundamental right to travel under the Constitution and the fundamental right of a citizen cannot be curtailed on the basis of a purported public interest litigation.

Further, Kalmadi's travel to London for the Olympics could not have been challenged in a public interest litigation as a trial court which was hearing a corruption case against him had already granted him the permission to travel.

On July 13, a special CBI court had allowed Kalmadi to go to London from July 26 to August 13.

The high court on July 25, however, had restrained Kalmadi from going to London till July 27 to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics on a PIL filed by advocate Rahul Mehra, saying his participation can cause "embarrassment" to the nation.

The bench, however, left it to the International Association of Athletes Federation (IAAF) to decide his plea for attending its meeting after reading the court's order.

Kalmadi had made a plea that being the president of Asian Athletes Association (AAA), he was invited by the IAAF.

The Lok Sabha MP and 10 others have been chargesheeted by CBI under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act for allegedly "illegally" awarding a contract to install Timing, Scoring and Results (TSR) system for the 2010 Commonwealth Games (CWG) to Swiss Timing, causing a loss of over Rs 90 crore to the exchequer.