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What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
It was a big relief for Jharkhand Chief minister Hemant Soren as the Supreme Court set aside the Jharkhand high court’s orders holding Public Interest Litigations (PILs) seeking a probe against Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader as maintainable and decided to proceed with them.
It was a big relief for Jharkhand Chief minister Hemant Soren as the Supreme Court set aside the Jharkhand high court’s orders holding Public Interest Litigations (PILs) seeking a probe against Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader as maintainable and decided to proceed with them.
A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) UU Lalit and Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Sudhanshu Dhulia dismissed the PIL in the case involving the alleged lease and investment in a shell company made by close aides of Jharkhand CM.
The SC bench said the petitioner, Shiv Shankar Sharma, had failed to disclose that a “similar petition” was filed before the HC in 2013, which was dismissed by both the HC as well as the SC.
In his first PIL, Sharma sought a probe by the Income Tax department to look into “money transferred by the Soren family in the name of private respondents through shell companies and investigate the source of income of private respondents and financial crime committed by…Hemant Soren…”.
In his second petition, Sharma sought “direction…to prosecute the Chief Minister, who is also the Minister in the Department of Mines. The reason being that he has misused his office in getting a mining lease in his own name.”
The Jharkhand government had filed a Special Leave Petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court in August to dismiss the PILs in connection to a shell company and a mining lease case against CM Hemant Soren and seek an ED and CBI probe.
The Jharkhand government argued that the rules of the court regarding the filing of PILs, under which Sharma was required to disclose all similar efforts made in the past, were not followed.
In its order, the SC said, “Although an apprehension was raised by this court that it is possible that efforts of the petitioner to uncover alleged corruption may be obstructed… yet statutory remedies available to the petitioner must be first exhausted, and only thereafter can he approach the High Court.” In the present case, the SC said, the petition made “no such effort”.
The SC also said that the “allegations made by the petitioner are vague, very much generalised and not at all substantiated by anything worthy to be called evidence”.
Earlier, CM Soren had filed a petition in the Jharkhand HC demanding action against RTI activist Shiv Sharma under Section 340 of the IPC for misleading the court through two PILs. Soren accused Sharma of damaging and tarnishing his image.
