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Nagpur bench rejects PIL against RSS

The Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court rejected the public interest litigation filed against the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh by RSS activist-turned-critic M D Kamdar. Kamdar sought that the court direct the government to force the RSS to shed its alleged anti-secular stance.

The bench, comprising Justice J N Pandya and Justice A B Palkar, rejected the PIL after a brief hearing, observing there was no element of public interest involved in it and that the central government was quite capable of safeguarding the public interest in this regard.

In his PIL, Kamdar, a 72-year-old medical practitioner, contended that the thrice-banned RSS was indulging in non-secular activities. He pleaded with the court to direct the central government to safeguard the basic secular structure of the Constitution by getting the RSS to change its ways.

RSS general secretary H V Sheshadri, in his affidavit earlier described the allegations that the RSS' activities are non-secular and anti-national as figments of imagination and without any substance.

The RSS general secretary submitted that it was the central governments duty to make any organisation secular. It could only declare an organisation unlawful, provided there are grounds to do so under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

He contended that the petitioner had not understood the activities of the RSS and hence was making false, frivolous and motivated allegations against the organisation to draw attention to himself.

Kamdar has been fighting against the RSS for over a decade through various courts, claiming it was no longer a cultural and social organisation, and that it could not be immune from paying the income tax.

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