The Allahabad high court on Friday dismissed a PIL challenging a direction by authorities in Amroha district asking chicken sellers not to open shops on the Kanwar yatra route during the ongoing Sawan month.
The petitioner demanded that the shops located in areas that don’t fall within the Kanwar yatra route be permitted to remain open. According to the petitioner, shopkeepers dealing in non-vegetarian food are being compelled/harassed to keep their shops closed between July 30 and August 24 during Kanwar yatra.
The petitioner claimed that a blank notice, purportedly signed by the in-charge inspector, Amroha Nagar police station has been served on the shopkeepers in this regard.
Dismissing the PIL filed by Nasir Farooq, a division bench comprising Chief Justice Arun Bhansali and Justice Kshitij Shailendra said, “Nowhere in the petition, the names of shopkeepers on whom the notices alleged to have been served, have been disclosed and in case the notices have been served and enforced on any of the shopkeepers, the shopkeepers themselves have the cause to question the validity of the notice/action”.
“The petitioner, an advocate, is seeking to project the case of the shop keepers, which apparently is mala fide, inasmuch as, the same petitioner has made representations seeking closing down of the liquor shops on the ‘Kanwar Yatra’ route. The intention, apparently, has been to misuse the PIL jurisdiction for the reasons best known to the petitioner,” the court observed.
“Filing of the petitions of present nature, without pleading actual cause and producing material in support of the petition and publishing news even regarding filing of the petitions of present nature essentially are Publicity Interest Litigations and not Public Interest Litigations, which conduct of the petitioner, cannot be countenanced,” the court said.
It was alleged in the petition that in Amroha city, those chicken shops which do not fall on Kanwar yatra route have been closed by the police because of which the traders are facing problems.
