Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, July 3: In a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by SOS International seeking CBI probe into cross-voting during MLCs election, Division Bench of High Court comprising Justice Mansoor Ahmed Mir and Justice Tashi Rabstan today granted final opportunity of three weeks to six MLAs—Prof Chaman Lal Gupta, Durga Dass, Prof Gharu Ram, Bharat Bhushan, Jagdish Sapolia and Lal Chand, to file reply.
When the PIL came up for hearing, Advocate S S Ahmed appearing for the PIL submitted that State Vigilance Organization, in its status report filed in terms of order dated October 4, 2012, has arbitrarily concluded that the allegations/grounds in the PIL are vague, wild and of general nature.
Stating that the stand taken by the SVO was utterly misconceived and against the established position of law, Advocate S S Ahmed argued that instead of registering the FIR under Section 5(2) of Prevention of Corruption Act and other provisions of law, Vigilance has opted to close the matter primarily with oblique motives as the beneficiary of the cross voting was the ruling coalition.
“Since SVO is directly under the administrative control of the State Government as such it even did not enquire into the matter and closed the matter in a manner unknown to law. It is settled law of the land that if a complaint discloses the commission of a cognizable offence then an FIR has to be registered but in the instant case a unique procedure was followed and the status report filed by the SVO merits to be rejected”, the counsel for the PIL said.
After hearing counsel for the PIL, Senior AAG Gagan Basotra for the State whereas Senior Advocate Sunil Sethi, Advocates SK Shukla, Harshwardan Gupta, Parimoksh Sethi and Anil Khajuria for the MLAs, Division Bench granted final opportunity of three weeks to six MLAs—Prof Chaman Lal Gupta, Durga Dass, Prof Gharu Ram, Bharat Bhushan, Jagdish Sapolia and Lal Chand, to file reply.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel