Thursday 17 May, 2007

Netaji report: Court gives Government more time
Centre fighting shy of filing affidavit in opposition


Won't take it lying down: Rudra Jyoti Bhattacharjee


Chief Justice Surinder Singh Nijjar and Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose of the Calcutta High Court today gave the Union Government two more weeks to file their response over their rejection of Mukherjee Commission report.

A Writ petition was filed early this year by lawyer Rudra Jyoti Bhattacharjee and eight others before the Court. The petitioners named the Principal Secretary (Prime Minister's Office), the Secretary (Ministry of Home Affairs) and Justice Manoj Kumar Mukherjee (retired judge of the Supreme Court of India) as respondents.

For those who are wondering what's all this -- in May last year the Government had made public the report of Justice MK Mukherjee. Attested to it was one-page Action Taken Report prepared by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) saying that "the Government have examined the Report submitted by the Commission on 8th November, 2005 in detail and have not agreed with the finding that - (a) Netaji did not die in the plane crash; and (b) The ashes in the Renkoji Temple were not of Netaji." (Meaning thereby that he did die in the air crash, as Pandit Nehru would say, and the ashes are his).

Since the Commission was set up on an order of the Calcutta High Court, it was but natural that the same court be approached again. So the man who had originally moved the Court, did it again. Lawayer Rudra Jyoti Bhattacharjee pleaded before the Court to set aside the Action Taken Report for it was "totally unacceptable according to settled principle of law".

Rudra and co-petitions, all of whom have been supporting Mission Netaji, stated in the petition that "unless an Order setting aside the impugned Action Taken Report is passed … the nation shall be deprived of exact information regarding mysterious disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, which is admittedly a definite matter of public importance".

When the case was admitted in February, the Government counsel remarked that the Centre had incurred "unnecessary expenditure" on Mukherjee Commission. This angered the Acting Chief Justice B Bhattacharya, who retorted that the Government should have objected when the Court had issued order for the formation of the Commission in 1998.

Justice Bhattacharya gave the Central Government a period of 6 weeks to file their response explaining why they rejected Justice Mukherjee's report. However no response was filed by the Government. Then, the new Chief Justice gave the Government further time, but still no answer came. Same story was repeated today.

Related links: Govt stand legally untenable; The Action Taken Report

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This shameless government is trying their best to save their socalled great leader's face and trying to hide all facts regarding Netaji