By IANS,
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Wednesday refused to take up as urgent the Uttar Pradesh government’s appeal against an Allahabad High Court order to scrap a panel probing alleged irregularities in police recruitment in 2005-06.
A bench of Justice B.N. Agrawal and Justice G.S. Singhvi turned down state counsel Shail Kumar Dwiwedi’s plea for an urgent hearing and said the matter brooks no urgency.
The bench said it will hear the matter Feb 2, the date slated by the court’s registry.
The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court last week scrapped a high-level inquiry committee which had probed the alleged irregularities in the recruitment of over 20,500 constables in the state police, provincial armed constabulary and the police wireless departments during 2005-06 – in the time of the previous Samajwadi Party government.
The high court gave its order on a lawsuit by Brij Bushan Bakshi and some other newly recruited constables who were sacked on the committee’s recommendations. The probe panel was headed by senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Shailja Kant Mishra.
On the probe panel’s suggestion, 25 senior IPS officers too were suspended.
Bakshi and others questioned before the high court the legality and the validity of the Mayawati government’s order of June 13, 2007, to form the panel.
The high court junked the formation of the panel, saying it was formed with “oblique motive”.
The high court observed in its judgment: “As would appear from the perusal of the record of the writ petition, Irshad Husain, upon whose alleged complaint the enquiry is said to have been initiated, was also sitting MLA under the previous government, but he never raised his voice in the assembly or by any other means about the alleged irregularities.”
“Upon change of government, the complaint followed. It is further apparent that all the three MLAs, on whose complaint the committee has been constituted to conduct enquiry in respect of the recruitment, are of the ruling party in the state.”
The court further noted, “It is only both pre-determined, intentional and with oblique motive to tarnish the image and lower the morale of police force that the committee was constituted.”
The petitioners argued that the constitution of the committee itself was tainted as also was the enquiry at the behest of three sitting MLAs of the ruling party. One of them was an MLA in the erstwhile government, but did not raise his voice against the alleged irregularities, the petitioners said.