There was a lot of drama on Thursday at the court of acting chief justice Amitabh Lala at the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court. A battery of lawyers were vehemently opposing an application for withdrawal of a Public Interest Litigation seeking prosecution of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati for her alleged involvement in the Rs 175 crore Taj heritage corridor scam.
The lawyers wanted the PIL to be reverted to the division bench comprising Justices Pradeep Kant and Shabiul Hasnain that had been hearing the case so far.
What seemed to irk the lawyers most was the 'surreptitious' manner in which the petitioner had moved the withdrawal application before the chief justice, when the matter had been pending before the division bench .
The PIL had sought the prosecution of Mayawati and her cabinet minister Naseemuddin Siddiqui for which the then UP Governor T V Rajeshwar had declined to grant statutory permission. However, through the PIL, the court's attention was drawn to the fact that the governor's permission was not required for prosecution of those holding high public offices in case they were charged for criminal offences like cheating, fraud or forgery -- as in the Taj case.
"The chief justice's bench has no jurisdiction to hear this application when the case (clubbed with two similar petitions) was already being heard by a division bench," argued advocates C B Pandey and Rohit Tripathi, backed by a huge team of lawyers in a jam-packed court.
Even before Justice Lala could hear the withdrawal application, a battery of advocates led by Pandey raised loud objection to the case being heard by him.
While putting up his arguments, Pandey sought to point out, "a PIL once filed, cannot be withdrawn at the sweet will of the petitioner." Alleging use of "undue influence and coercion" by the state machinery, he was of the view that since the matter related to corruption at the highest level in the state, it could not taken lightly.
According to Pandey, "the petitioner Anupama Singh committed a blatant violation of the Advocate's Act by engaging another lawyer to file her withdrawal application without seeking my 'no-objection certificate', since I had been arguing the case for the past two years."
He accused Singh (a school teacher) of misleading the court by filing a false affidavit in which she had mentioned that she was not represented by any counsel and had been appearing in person .
"The petitioner further misled the court by concealing vital facts -- that the case was part-heard and tied up with the division bench and that during the pendency of the case, she had been threatened and her services were terminated by her employer for which she had approached the court and also got relief," Pandey pointed out.
Significantly in her withdrawal application quietly filed before the court on Wednesday, the petitioner had denied any kind of pressure on her. She even went to the extent of claiming that she was prompted to withdraw the application after she read a copy of Mayawati's counter affidavit. "My misunderstandings and confusion with respect to the case were removed after I read the counter affidavit submitted by the chief minister, hence I have decided to withdraw my PIL," she stated in her application.
The case would now be heard by the original bench on March 18.
