Court No. - 34
Case :- PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION (PIL) No. - 402 of 2019
Petitioner :- Bhartiya Parvez Islam Respondent :- Union Of India And 6 Others Counsel for Petitioner :- Jai Krishna Tiwari
Counsel for Respondent :- C.S.C.,A.S.G.I.,Anand Tewari,Hari Nath Tripathi,Vikas Budhwar
Hon'ble Sudhir Agarwal,J. Hon'ble Rajendra Kumar-IV,J.
1. Heard Sri Jai Krishna Tiwari, learned counsel for petitioner, Learned Standing Counsel for State-respondent 3, Sri Anand Tewari, learned counsel for respondent 5, Sri Vikas Budhwar, learned counsel for respondents 6 and 7, Sri Mehul Khare, learned counsel for respondent 4.
2. This is thoroughly misconceived, ill advised and maliciously sponsored petition at the instance of those who have vested interest in the matter.
3. The only prayer in petition is that Advertisement dated 25.11.2018 inviting applications for opening of 127 Retail Outlets (Petrol Pumps) in District- Moradabad be quashed. The ground is that such opening of Retail Outlets will cause several economic problems, like hike of price of petrol etc.
4. Additional Retail Outlets at different places are opened for convenience of common public. Only those who have commercial interest in avoiding competition or addition of competitors, would get affected by such new outlets. They have no legal right to do so and in our view, this petition is not a bonafide one. Though filed as public interest litigation, but it is not in accordance with the directions given by Supreme Court in Jaipur Sahar Hindu Vikas Samiti vs State of Rajasthan and others, (2014) 5 SCC 530 has cautioned about frivolous Public Interest Litigation in following words :
"The concept of Public Interest Litigation is a phenomenon which is evolved to bring justice to the reach of people who are handicapped by ignorance, indigence, illiteracy and other down trodden people. Through the Public Interest Litigation, the cause of several people who are not able to approach the Court is espoused. In the guise of Public Interest Litigation, we are coming across several cases where it is exploited for the benefit of certain individuals. The Courts have to be very cautious and careful while entertaining Public Interest Litigation. The Judiciary should deal with the misuse of Public Interest Litigation with iron hand. If the Public Interest Litigation is permitted to be misused the very purpose for which it is conceived, namely to come to the rescue of the poor and down trodden will be defeated. The Courts should discourage the unjustified litigants at the initial stage itself and the person who misuses the forum should be made accountable for it. In the realm of Public Interest Litigation, the Courts while protecting the larger public interest involved, should at the time have to look at the effective way in which the relief can be granted to the people, whose rights are adversely affected or at stake. When their interest can be protected and the controversy or the dispute can be adjudicated by a mechanism created under a particular statute, the parties should be relegated to the appropriate forum, instead of entertaining the writ petition filed as Public Interest Litigation."
(emphasis added)
5. In view of above discussions and in our considered opinion, present writ petition does not qualify as a Public Interest Litigation at all. It is nothing, but a petition filed for extraneous considerations for personal gains, and, therefore, deserves to be dismissed with exemplary cost in order to discourage the writ petitioner from filing such frivolous Public Interest Litigation again.
6. The writ petition is, accordingly, dismissed with cost, which we quantify to Rs.50,000/-.
Order Date :- 26.4.2019 Manish Himwan