In a major setback to the Akhilesh Yadav Government, the lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Friday stayed the Government's order to withdraw cases against people charged with terror activities like blasts in Faizabad civil court and Sankat Mochan temple in Varanasi. The court referred the matter to a larger bench.
The court's decision will vindicate the stand of the BJP, which launched an all-out attack on the SP Government for pursuing a dangerous "policy of appeasement" for vote bank politics. The court gave six weeks time to the respondents, including the Central and the State Governments, for filing their replies and four weeks for rejoinder thereafter.
Justices Rajeev Sharma and Mahendra Dayal passed the order on a PIl filed by lawyer Ranjana Agnihotri and five others.
The petitioners had sought direction for quashing the order issued by the State Government for withdrawing cases against people accused of indulging in terror activities and serial blasts.
On behalf of the Government, additional advocate general Bulbul Godiyal argued 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, HS Jain opposed the submission of the State Government and maintained that the sanction from the Centre was certainly required for withdrawing the cases.
As directed by the bench earlier, 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The court had earlier directed the State to file an affidavit of alleged terrorists whose cases were recently withdrawn and whether Centre’s consent had been taken for the same.
Meanwhile, defending his Government’s decision, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said, "My Government will continue its fight for the cause of innocents who were illegally framed. The SP Government is committed to fulfil its promises made in the poll manifesto. We had announced that our Government would withdraw false cases against innocent people and we are fulfilling that promise," he told reporters on the sidelines of a Government function held on Friday to launch a health scheme for the poor in the State.