Hearing on a public interest litigation challenging the Act passed by the State Government regarding the expense on house rent allowance and other expenses for ex chief ministers, the high court of Uttarakhand has directed the state government to issue a notice to all the ex-chief ministers within 10 days.
This also includes former CM and current governor of Maharashtra Bhagat Singh Koshyari. The final hearing of the case is slated to be held on February 25. According to the details provided by sources, the notices issued to the ex chief ministers in the past were returned without being received by the party concerned except Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ who is also the current Union Human Resource Development minister.
His counsel was also present in the high court on Tuesday. However, the notices served to two other ex chief ministers- Vijay Bahuguna and Bhuwan Chandra Khanduri were returned.
The late Narayan Dutt Tiwari and Koshiyari had been kept out of the list of ex-CMs to whom the earlier notices were served. However, now Koshyari’s name has been added to the list and the government has been directed to serve the notices to the three ex-chief ministers. The matter was taken up for hearing by the division bench of chief justice Ramesh Ranganathan and justice Alok Kumar Verma.
It will be recalled that the Dehradun-based Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra had filed the PIL in the high court challenging the act of the government under which the state government had provided relief to the ex chief ministers from paying for the accommodation and other facilities provided to them.