HC asks activist to deposit Rs2L for PIL

Nagpur: Continuing its crackdown on frivolous petitions, Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court on Thursday dismissed a petition of controversial social worker Janardhan Moon and asked him to deposit Rs2 lakh for hearing his third plea.
Last month, a bench headed by Justice Ravi Deshpande had asked a few petitioners to collectively deposit Rs30 lakh with HC registry to prove their bona fide in six cases.

Moon’s latest case was regarding private schools affiliated to Maharashtra State Board allegedly forcing students to refer to books of private publications for Standard I to VIII. He named three school — Mother Kids, Nehru English and Little Scholar Public — for resorting to such practice which was putting huge monetary burden on the parents as they were forced to buy books of certain private publishers only. Through counsel Ashwin Ingole, he prayed for directives to the state government to make it mandatory for such schools to use books prescribed by it only.

Moon said he had made a complaint in this regard with deputy director of education’s office, after which primary and secondary officers took some measures but failed to act against the schools.

The bench of Justices Deshpande and Vinay Joshi dismissed another plea filed by Moon challenging Sikh Education Society’s (SES) decision to close its school due to financial crunch.

On Tuesday, the judges clarified they could not direct the government to appoint a new management to look after affairs of the school. The SES could hand over the reins of the school to interested parties. They pointed out if the management still wanted to close down the school, it should do it after end of current academic session. HC told Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT) to take back the land given on lease to SES in case of closure of school.

HC also dismissed a PIL against senior BJP corporator Dayashankar Tiwari for allegedly misusing a school land belonging to Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC). The court forfeited Rs60,000 deposited by three petitioners — Ravindra Paigwar, Bhola Baisware and Hasmukh Saglani — for proving their bona fide. The judges directed HC registry to hand over this amount to Child Welfare Department, before rejecting contentions of petitioners finding no merit.

According to petitioners, Tiwari’s trust — Lotus Cultural and Sporting Association — had taken NMC school at Namakganj in Maskasath on lease but was using it as publicity office of the corporator. They also claimed Tiwari was doing illegal construction on the school’s premises without NMC’s permission.