National Herald case
NEW DELHI, Apr 5:
The Supreme Court Friday stayed the Delhi High Court order asking the Associated Journals Ltd (AJL), publisher of National Herald, to vacate the Herald House building here.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi also issued notice to the Centre’s Land and Development Office (L&DO) on the AJL plea.
AJL moved the apex court against the high court order dismissing its plea to restrain the Centre from taking any “coercive steps” to vacate its premises at Herald House in ITO area in the heart of the national capital.
The high court held that the entire transaction of transferring shares of AJL to Young Indian (YI) company, in which Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi are majority shareholders, was a “clandestine and surreptitious transfer of the lucrative interest in the premises” to YI.
AJL has also sought in the top court setting aside of the Centre’s October 30, 2018 order ending its 56-year-old lease and asking it to vacate the premises on the grounds that no printing or publishing activity was going on and building was being used only for commercial purposes.
The high court had on February 28 dismissed the plea of AJL and had said there has been “misuse” of lease conditions.
The AJL’s plea said that the present political dispensation in power at the Centre has never hidden its pathological hatred for Nehruvian ideals.
“One of their favourite propaganda is to blame Pandit Nehru for almost everything that ails the nation. The eviction proceedings constitute a malicious step in the larger design of defaming and effacing the legacy of Pandit Nehru,” it said.
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