Author: R.B. Singh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: May 22, 2001
The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad
High Court today rejected the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed last
Friday by journalist and Rajya Sabha MP Kuldip Nayar and four others in
the Ayodhya issue.
Disposing of the PIL, the bench,
comprising Justice S.K. Sen and Justice S.K. Trivedi, held that ''the court
could not issue a mandamus against the state government for rectifying
the defect in respect of the constitution of the special court through
a government notification issued on September 1993.''
The PIL had requested the court
to direct the Uttar Pradesh government ''to take steps to issue a notification
after consultation with the High Court amending the notification of September
9, 1993 in the same terms and or issue a fresh notification after consultation
with the High Court conferring jurisdiction on the Special Court in Lucknow
to try and inquire into and commit to the court of session the said case
relating to crime no. 198 of 1992 of police state of Ramjanambhoomi, Ayodhya.''
The Court observed ''it was the
CBI, the prosecuting agency in the case, which was the appropriate forum
to decide on the issue and proceed in accordance with the law.''
The CBI is at liberty to choose
the appropriate forum, it said.
UP Chief Minister Rajnath Singh
said the court decision vindicated the state government's stand. Singh
said the court's ruling only confirmed what he has been saying all along
that the ball was in the CBI's court and the state government had not received
any request either from the court or from the CBI to issue a fresh notification.
Opposition parties were raising the issue only to divert the people's attention,
he said.
Singh said the Opposition parties
should let the law take its own course. He added he had reiterated many
times that he would abide by the court verdict in the Ayodhya case.
The PIL had also pleaded that ''elementary
justice requires that persons accused of a grave crime should not escape
conviction or trial on technical grounds and must, if guilty, be convicted
and if innocent, acquitted.
The eight accused in crime no.198
include L.K. Advani, M.M. Joshi, Ashok Singhal, Giriraj Kishore, V.H. Dalmia,
Vinay Katiyar, Uma Bharati and Sadhvi Rithambhara.
Nayyar, one of the petitioners,
said it was now for the CBI to act. ''If it doesn't then people will say
that it didn't do so because it is part of the personnel department of
the home affairs,'' he said.
