Engineer files PIL pitching for J&K solution, Supreme Court slaps ₹50k fine

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court is liberal with entertaining PILs espousing social causes and human rights violations but not when they go overboard to suggest implementation of the Pervez Musharraf-Manmohan Singh formula to solve the Kashmir problem, a chemical engineer realised after being asked to pay Rs 50,000 fine.
A bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and Hima Kohli was so exasperated by Prabhakar V Deshpande’s outlandish suggestions, having a bearing on the country’s foreign policy and defence mechanism, that they extracted the ludicrous prayer made in his PIL — “ . . . a writ/order or direction upon the respondent authorities/ Government of India to enforce the Pervez Musharraf-Manmohan Singh formula to solve the Kashmir issue/problem. ”
The bench said, “The petition is replete with frivolous averments which, in any event, lie outside the domain of judicial review. For instance paragraph 4(vi) of the petition is extracted below:
“That having purchased all the wealth of J&K in one year. . . with money saved on defence expenditure — India can buy all listed companies in Pakistan stock exchange in one year; India can buy all listed companies in Bangladesh stock exchange in one year; India can buy all wealth of Pakistan in 15 years; India can buy all wealth of Bangladesh in 20 years; India can buy all listed companies in stock exchanges of 50 Islamic nations in 40 years; India can buy all listed companies in stock exchanges of 100 nations in 80 years; India can buy all wealth of Pak, Bangladesh, J&K and listed companies in stock exchanges of 100 nations in little more than 100years. ”