HC not to intervene in PM’s public meeting case
| Date :22-Apr-2019 |
Legal Correspondent:
In the matter related to the petitioners requesting for holding a public meeting of the Prime Minister on April 26, 2019 at Shaheed Smarak, Gol Bazaar, Jabalpur, the division bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court comprising Justice, R S Jha and Justice, Nandita Dubey has said that “the respondents have undertaken to render full assistance to the petitioners for organising the public meeting at Garrison ground, including all security arrangement and in view of the statement of the Collector that necessary NOC would be obtained and issued to the petitioner by the Army authorities on April 22, 2019, we do not find any reason to interfere with the impugned order passed by the authorities as the same has been passed after taking into consideration security issues and problems and the rules and guidelines relating to the same.”
The division bench added that “It is accordingly ordered that, as undertaken by the State authorities before the court, the petitioners would be permitted to hold/organise the public meeting at Garrison ground on April 26, 2019 and all the necessary formalities would be processed by the district administration as well as other authorities for facilitating the same. List this petition after a week to enable the parties to place the subsequent events on record regarding the steps taken by them.”
Division bench heard the petition filed by G S Thakur and Jay Sachdeva. Senior Advocate R N Singh with Advocate Vijay Shankar Pandey, Advocate Ved Prakash Tiwari and Advocate S K Shrivastava appeared on behalf of the petitioner, while Additional Advocate General Shashank Shekhar and Deputy Advocate General Praveen Dubey for the State and Advocate Siddharth Seth for the EC. The petition has been filed by the petitioner being aggrieved by the order dated on April 19, 2019, by which Nodal Officer Jabalpur on approval of the District Election Officer has not permitted and rejected the application filed by the petitioner on April 17, 2019 requesting for holding a public meeting of the PM on April 26, 2019 at Shaheed Smarak, Gol Bazaar and in turn, has advised the petitioner to hold the same at Garrison Ground or in the alternative at Veterinary College, Jabalpur.
The petitioners submitted that, they, after consulting the district authorities, had moved an application for organising a public meeting of the Prime Minister at Shaheed Smarak ground, which was duly forwarded by the authorities for approval. It is submitted that at no point of time were the petitioners informed that Shaheed Smarak was not available for organising such a public meeting of the PM, but the authorities, taking into consideration the report of the SP dated on April 19, 2019, have refused the permission to the petitioners to organise public meeting at Shaheed Smarak and have asked the petitioners to organise the same at Garrison Ground or Veterinary College ground.
Petitioners submitted that, Shaheed Smarak is admittedly one of the places that has been notified by the district administration for holding the public meeting or other such functions in which the number of persons attending is likely to be more than 10,000. It is stated that, on the basis of the aforesaid notification of the State, the petitioners had moved an application and, therefore, the same could not have been refused.