The Aam Aadmi Party government on Tuesday informed the Delhi high court that the brother of Hyderabad University Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, who had committed suicide, is not interested in taking up the job offered to him on compassionate grounds.
The submission was made before a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath by the Delhi government which also sought dismissal of the PIL against their decision to award a job to the brother of Rohith.
"Respondent number 4 (Vemula's brother) has written to us that he does not want the job offer on compassionate grounds. Hence the writ petition has become infructuous. Therefore, the same is not maintainable," Delhi government's Additional Standing Counsel Gautam Narayan informed the bench.
The court, however, directed the government to file a short affidavit with regard to the submission made before it in connection with the averments made in the writ petition within two weeks and fixed the matter for further consideration on July 13.
The petition by advocate Avadh Kaushik had challenged the Aam Aadmi Party government's February 24 decision, notified on March 3, to award a group 'C' government job to Rohith's brother, Vemula Raja Chaithanya Kumar, as well as government accommodation on out of turn basis, saying it was "illegal, arbitrary and politically motivated".
As per the Delhi cabinet, the decision was taken on a representation received from Rohith's brother seeking support for himself and his family by way of employment.
The petition contends that no such representation was received from Rohith's family.
The petitioner alleged that cabinet decision was "illegal, arbitrary, motivated, discriminatory and unjustifiable and unfair exercise of discretion without any mandate of law, statute, policy and guidelines".
The plea also contended that the decision was "in clear violation of law of land and public policy thereby infringing and abridging the legal and fundamental rights of the public at large in general and Delhi youth in particular who are trying to get the job on their own merits".
It said there was no need to give a job on compassionate grounds to the kin of Rohith as he "was neither a resident of Delhi nor was a government employee under Delhi administration or for that matter, under any government organisation, and he was also not a student in any university/college connected or affiliated to Delhi in any manner and even no offence or any wrong act whatsoever had been committed against him in Delhi".
