The price of filing an appeal in the Supreme Court proved dearly for a sitting MlA from Bihar as he was slapped with Rs 10-lakh cost for approaching the court on Friday with a frivolous case. The order is unprecedented and one of the highest costs to be imposed ever on any individual by the court while refusing to entertain a petition.
Ravinder Singh, currently a legislator elected from Arwal constituency in Bihar’s Jehanabad district belongs to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the party which is in power in the State along with the JD (U).
Singh earned the ire of the court as he sought an enquiry into an article written in a magazine called “Nyay Chakra”, published long ago in 1994. According to Singh, the article prima facie aimed to disturb “national harmony” and thus appeared to be against national interest. A similar request was earlier rejected by the Patna High Court on December 6, 2016, against which Singh had preferred to appeal before the highest court.
Hearing his appeal, a Bench of Chief Justice JS Khehar and Justices NV Ramana and DY Chandrachud found no ground to interfere as the HC order was “explicit and clear”. How a court could go into an article published in the year 1994 on a petition filed by the petitioner (Singh) in 2015, was the question the HC asked while dismissing the matter.
The Bench put the same question to Singh’s lawyers who said that being an elected representative he was espousing a public cause as the news item targeted certain individuals of a community thereby threatening national harmony. But the argument earned him no favour as the Bench made up its mind that the petition needs to be dismissed with exemplary cost.
Recording reasons in the order, the CJI-headed Bench said, “The instance course of action adopted by the petitioner (Singh) is un-condonable because the petitioner is a people’s representative and cannot be expected to abuse the liberty available to approach this court.” He was directed to deposit the cost to the SC’s Welfare Fund within four weeks. If he failed to pay up, the Bench directed the matter to be re-listed.
This is not the first time that CJI Khehar has been ruthless in punishing frivolous litigations. Day in and day out, the court is setting a precedent by dismissing unwanted petitions with a minimum cost of Rs 1 lakh. Within the first month after taking over as CJI, Justice Khehar has made his intentions clear. “It is high time we impose exemplary costs to deter litigants from approaching the Court on frivolous issues,” he said. lately, two corporate cases were dismissed by his Bench with a fine of Rs 25 lakh each.