BJP parliamentarian from Delhi Manoj Tiwari on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that lawmakers were answerable to the people, unlike judges who sit in a “cosy place”, while justifying his action of breaking open the court-ordered lock on an unauthorised structure.

“If I had not done it, the mob would have turned violent. People might have died,” senior advocate Vikas Singh, who appeared for Tiwari, told a bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur, S. Abdul Nazeer and Deepak Gupta at a hearing.

“Your Lordships sit in this cosy place where nobody questions your Lordships. But I (an MP) am answerable to the people,” he said.

Singh’s submission came after Justice Abdul Nazeer asked: “Who permitted you to break the seal? Assuming the sealing action was wrong, you should have approached the authority.”

The court had last month issued a contempt notice to Tiwari, who heads the BJP’s Delhi unit, for breaking the lock of the sealed property in north-east Delhi, an area he represents in Parliament.

The Gokalpuri property was among hundreds of commercial premises the court had ordered sealed for unauthorised construction in residential areas and in violation of the capital’s master plan.

The court had also appointed a monitoring committee to determine to what extent constructions had come up illegally.

The East Delhi Municipal Corporation had registered an FIR against Tiwari, accusing him of breaking the seal.

A subsequent report that senior advocate Ranjit Kumar — assisting the bench as amicus curiae — had submitted led to the summons from the top court.

Singh, Tiwari’s counsel, argued that the monitoring committee was acting in an arbitrary manner, randomly choosing properties to seal them.

At several places, the lawyer said, unauthorised four-to five-storey structures had come up but the committee had not taken any action against them. He also claimed that the committee had moved the contempt application to gain publicity.

The senior counsel said Tiwari had to act on the spur of the moment as there was a huge mob that was getting increasingly restless.

Had Tiwari not broken the seal, things might have spun out of control, Singh claimed.

“Do you go by what the mob says?” Justice Gupta said. “On the one hand you argue that there should be rule of law…. You are a responsible person. What is your duty as a representative of the people? You must approach the authority.”

Singh replied: “If people die then who is responsible? I (Tiwari) have to answer the people. Nobody comes to question your Lordship. As a representative, I need to answer the people.”

“The monitoring committee,” Singh said, “is terrorising the citizens of Delhi.”

“They (the monitoring committee) are using this as a test case to terrorise the people of Delhi. I am sorry to say this but that is what is happening,” Singh added.

Advocate A.D.N. Rao, who appeared for the monitoring committee, said the owner of the sealed premises had himself admitted to illegal constructions and had also paid a fine, but the MP had taken the law into his hands by breaking the seal.

“Who is he (Tiwari) to come there and break the seal? He is not the owner of the premises. The whole purpose is to misuse the court,” Rao said.

He also denied the allegation that the monitoring committee was sealing premises for publicity.

The court, after hearing the arguments, reserved its judgment.