Indian courts see all kinds of strange petitions, and the Allahabad High Court saw another such case where the petitioner, Dr M Ismail Faruqui, tried to argue that Yogi Adityanath should be removed from the post of Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.
Dr Farugui argued that Yogi Adityanath was not qualified to contest the election for the Legislative Assembly of UP due to a violation of provisions under Rule 4A of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961. However, the court dismissed his petition and imposed a fine of Rs 11,000 on him for wasting court’s valuable time.
The bench of Justice Attau Rahman Masoodi and Justice Om Prakash Shukla dismissed the plea while stating that the petitioner had filed a similar case previously as well.
The court said, “This court, having given a thoughtful consideration to the issue in hand, finds the present petition to be very amusing. The petitioner seems to be on a spree of filing this kind of petition as admittedly, an identical petition praying inter-alia for the same relief vide W.P © no. 5627 of 2022, was dismissed as withdrawn.”
Deliberating the merits of the petition, the bench said, “As per Section 80 of the Representation of People’s Act, 195, no election shall be called in question except by an Election Petition presented in accordance with the provisions of this part.”
The court also noted that by filing the petition, the petitioner was calling into question Yogi Adityanath’s election from the Gorakhpur seat, something which the law doesn’t permit him to do directly since he was neither an elector nor a candidate at the election on the seat.
Imposing the monetary fine, the court added, “The courts have also from time to time held that no litigant has a right to unlimited draught on the court time and public money in order to get his affairs settled in a manner as he wishes…. The court cannot be oblivious to the fact that today people rush to courts to file cases in profusion under this attractive name of public interest.”