Setback for Akhilesh govt, Allahabad HC stays order on withdrawing terror cases

The Allahabad High Court today stayed the Uttar Pradesh government's order to withdraw cases against persons accused of indulging in terror activities.

The order was passed by Justices Rajeev Sharma and Mahendra Dayal of the Lucknow bench on a PIL filed by local lawyer Ranjana Agnihotri and five others.

While referring the matter to a larger Bench, the court gave six weeks time to the respondents, including the Central and the state governments, for filing their reply and four weeks for rejoinder thereafter.

The petitioners had sought direction for quashing the order issued by the state for withdrawing cases against persons accused of indulging in terror activities and serial blasts.

The court directed that the order for withdrawing the cases against the alleged terror accused shall be kept in abeyance.

Appearing on behalf of the UP government, Additional Advocate General Bulbul Godiyal submitted that the PIL was not maintainable as earlier a similar petition was dismissed by the Allahabad Bench.

She submitted that the Centre's permission was not required for withdrawing the cases.

On behalf of the petitioner's counsel, H S Jain opposed the submission of the state government and said sanction from the central government was certainly required for withdrawing the cases.

As directed by the bench on the earlier date, the entire record of alleged terror accused was not produced by the state government and only a list of their names was submitted with the affidavit.

The court had on Wednesday last directed the state to file an affidavit of alleged terrorist whose cases were recently withdrawn and whether the consent of the central government has been taken or not for the same.

The petitioners have sought direction from the court for quashing the order issued by the state for withdrawing cases against persons accused of alleged terrorist activities and serial blasts after summoning the original order from the opposite parties.

It does not surprise me that the UP government had issued such a notification.

If the need arose, politicians would sell their own mothers and daughters to get votes.

We Indians are fortunate that we still have a judiciary which is comparatively less corrupt probably because they don't have to go get votes.

However, near the end of their professional lives, even some of them do give judgements which please the party in power so that they are appointed to some posts after retirement.

The best solution would be to bar any government employee from accepting any post which gives them monetary or other benefits for at least 10 years after retirement.

As it is, they get very good pensions which increases with time and which should not require them to work for the rest of their lives. The government uses these carrots to bribe them.