The case titled Manohar Lal Sharma v. Comptroller and Auditor General of India and Ors., W.P. (Crl.) No. 183 of 2013, PIL, was listed for hearing on October 28, 2013 before a bench comprising of Justices H.L. Dattu and Ranjan Gogoi of the Supreme Court of India.
Advocate Manohar Lal Sharma who has associated himself with a number of controversial cases in the past had approached the Hon’ble Court through a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) challenging the issuance of hundreds of licences for over 21,000 acres of land to real estate developers in Gurgaon. One of these developers against whom Mr. Sharma had raised his allegations is the one with which Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, is associated. The Petitioner had sought the quashing of the order by which the audit inquiry against colony licence issued to Sky Light Hospitality Private Limited was stopped. The said company was incorporated on November 1, 2007 and has two Directors namely, Robert Vadra and his mother Maureen Vadra.
The Hon’ble Court after hearing the Petitioner-in-Person chided him for engaging in cheap publicity and instituting frivolous petitions targeting a single individual for the same. This attitude of filing PILs for frivolous reasons defeats the very objective for which the mechanism was developed.
It is noteworthy that the Supreme Court has consistently held that many a times individuals having absolutely no public interest except for personal gain or private profit either of themselves or as a proxy of others or for any other extraneous motivation or for glare of publicity break the queue muffing their faces by wearing the mask of public interest litigation, get into the Courts by filing vexatious and frivolous petitions and thus criminally waste the valuable time of the Courts and as a result of which the queue standing outside the doors of the Courts never moves, which piquant situation creates frustration in the minds of the genuine litigants and resultantly they lose faith in the administration of our judicial system. There have been a spate of judgments of the Hon’ble Court wherein the Court has expressed its displeasure on such incidents and has vehemently opposed such moves.
The Petition in the instant case was thus rejected with the Petitioner seeking permission of the Hon’ble Court for withdrawing the Writ Petition, which was accepted by the Court. The Writ Petition therefore stood dismissed as withdrawn.