Chief Minister Hemant Soren got relief on Wednesday when the Jharkhand High Court dismissed the PIL filed against him in a stone mining lease. 

“It is not maintainable…”, observed the division bench headed by Chief Justice Sanjaya Kumar Mishra in its ruling. Incidentally, Justice Mishra delivered this order a day before he retired from service on December 27.

The Jharkhand High Court dismissed the PIL filed against Chief Minister Hemant Soren and his relatives for alleged allocation of a mining lease. The matter pertains to the allotment of the stone mine lease in his favour in the Angara block of Ranchi.

Hemant Soren, being the minister of the mines department, issued a mining lease for quarrying stones in his name on over 88 decimals of land in 2021 in Angara block in Ranchi. Soren had the mining lease earlier and on its expiration, he re-applied for it. However, when the lease was granted the matter was highlighted forcing him to surrender it.

The division bench headed by the Chief Justice Sanjaya Kumar Mishra and Justice Ananda Sen dismissing the public interest litigation said that the petition is a repetition of an earlier one filed by petitioner Shiv Shankar Sharma

As there is nothing new in the PIL filed by the RTI activist and advocate Sunil Mahto, it stood dismissed, the court said. The judgement was pronounced in the virtual mode.

Notably, chief minister Hemant Soren is respondent number 7 in the said Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by one Shiv Shankar Sharma seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe against Soren for getting a stone mining lease allotted in his name, completely misusing his official position.

Mahto had alleged in his PIL that 11 acres at Chanho in Ranchi district had been allotted to a company owned by the chief minister's wife Kalpana Soren and his sister-in-law in 2021.

Another 88 decimal in Angara block also in the same district had been allotted to Soren himself the same year. The hearing on the matter took place in November and the bench had reserved its order.

It is noteworthy that Sunil Mahato had filed a PIL against Chief Minister Hemant Soren in the stone mining lease case. A hearing on this had already taken place, but the court had reserved the decision. The Chief Justice announced the verdict on his last working day. This decision of the High Court has brought great relief to the Chief Minister. Let it be known that if the Chief Justice had not given his verdict in this case today, then this case would have had to be listed for hearing again in some other court.