A division bench of Justice Uday Umesh Lalit of Supreme Court deferred the hearing of the SLP of the Jharkhand government till August 17. The Court directed senior lawyer Kapil Sibal, appearing for the Jharkhand government, to submit all the records related to the matter in which the state government has filed an SLP.
The State government has challenged the maintainability order passed by the Jharkhand High Court in twin PILs namely 4290/21 and 727/22. The Supreme Court said relevant documents of the SLP may be required to complete the hearing.
The Jharkhand High Court had said it was of the considered opinion that the writ petitions cannot be thrown away on the ground of maintainability and it will proceed to hear the matters on merit.
At today’s hearing Kapil Sibal informed the court that Rajiv Kumar who was previously representing the petitioner of the PIL was arrested by the Kolkata police on the charge of extorting money from a Kolkata-based businessman in the name of PIL 4290/21. To this, the Supreme Court said that it was not concerned with that fact.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren is respondent in both the PILs filed by Shiv Shankar Sharma. In the PIL 4290/21 the petitioner alleged that the Chief Minister and his associates laundered money through various shell companies. In the second PIL, he alleged the CM of issuing his office to get a stone mining lease in his name. The bench of Chief Justice Dr. Ravi Ranjan and Justice Sujit Narayan Prasad of Jharkhand High Court found both the PILs maintainable.
Notably, a day before the hearing Jharkhand Resident Commissioner Mast Ram Meena filed an interlocutory petition before the Supreme Court regarding the arrest of Rajiv Kumar by the Kolkata police.
Mast Ram Meena has attached the copy of the FIR filed against Rajiv Kumar in Kolkata. The police claimed that it arrested Rajiv Kumar along with Rs 50 lakh cash which he had extorted from Amit Agrawal.
Legal experts said an interlocutory petition has been filed to tell the Supreme Court that the advocate of these PILs has no credibility and he in connivence with the petitioner used to file such PILs to extort money.