HC dismisses PIL on Gomti river bank beautification

On Aug 22, 2015

Lucknow, Aug 22 (PTI) The Allahabad High Court has dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition against River Front Development Project for Gomti river bank beautification in the state capital.

The court declined to entertain the petition.

“Public Interest Litigation is increasingly becoming an avenue for publicity and, what is the worse, an attempt by vested interests to derail public projects. We are not satisfied that the present proceedings have been filed bonafide in recourse to the jurisdiction in public interest,” the Lucknow bench of the court observed while dismissing the PIL.

A division bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justice Shree Narain Shukla gave the judgement on August 20 on a PIL seeking directions for quashing an order, if any, passed by the state government in respect of the River Front Development Project, to stop the work of the project and for order an inquiry of it.

The counsel for the state and Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) had questioned the bonafide of the petitioner by submitting that the petition appears to be a proxy litigation at the behest of vested interests.

They also submitted that the petition was based only on newspaper reports. The contention of the petitioner was that he had sought a disclosure of information related to this matter on July 23, 2015, which was refused by the Public Information Officer on August 10, 2015.

“Unfortunately, it has now become a fashion increasingly to look at news articles and present petitions in the public interest leaving the entire burden upon the court to investigate into underlying legal issues and inquire into the cause on the basis of a possible legal framework,” the court observed.

It ruled that the petitioners who move the court in public interest are not exempted from complying with the requirements of Article 226 of the Constitution. They must primarily discharge the burden which any petitioner coming to the court has to discharge of establishing a cause of action or an illegality on which the claim for relief is founded, it ruled.