Rarely have frivolous petitions incurred such wrath in a Court of law. But it seems today was no ordinary day..A Bench of Chief Justice J S Khehar, D Y Chandrachud and Sanjay Kishan Kaul today imposed a cost of Rs. 25 lakh on an NGO for filing frivolous petitions. And that’s not all. The NGO is also barred from “urging a cause in public interest” across any court in India..The case in question was a PIL filed by public spirited organization, Suraz India Trust..When the matter was called upon for hearing today, the Bench was quite antagonized at the petitioners’ obvious defiance of their previous order granting him one week’s time to file a written response. However, he remained insistent on assisting the court orally..It was mentioned by the Bench that all sixty four of the PILs filed by the petitioner had been dismissed as being devoid of merits..Interestingly, the petitioner had written to the registry, inquiring on whose directions the summary of his antecedents in the Court were furnished. This obviously did not go down well with the Bench, which found the insinuations “disturbing”..CJI Khehar said,.“64 litigations you have filed…all have been dismissed? How can you do this?”.The Court then gave him the same option it had given him earlier occasion: Suraz India Trust would cease to file any further petitions. The petitioner agreed, and the Bench noted that it would assemble at 2pm today to dictate the order..In the order, that took over one hour to be put down, the bench noted that the Court’s time had been wasted indiscriminately. Therefore, it only made sense that this habit of wasting public time be put an end to..Accordingly, it directed that the petitioner be barred from filing PILs across India, and asked him to deposit a cost of 25 lakh rupees with the Apex Court Registry.
Rarely have frivolous petitions incurred such wrath in a Court of law. But it seems today was no ordinary day..A Bench of Chief Justice J S Khehar, D Y Chandrachud and Sanjay Kishan Kaul today imposed a cost of Rs. 25 lakh on an NGO for filing frivolous petitions. And that’s not all. The NGO is also barred from “urging a cause in public interest” across any court in India..The case in question was a PIL filed by public spirited organization, Suraz India Trust..When the matter was called upon for hearing today, the Bench was quite antagonized at the petitioners’ obvious defiance of their previous order granting him one week’s time to file a written response. However, he remained insistent on assisting the court orally..It was mentioned by the Bench that all sixty four of the PILs filed by the petitioner had been dismissed as being devoid of merits..Interestingly, the petitioner had written to the registry, inquiring on whose directions the summary of his antecedents in the Court were furnished. This obviously did not go down well with the Bench, which found the insinuations “disturbing”..CJI Khehar said,.“64 litigations you have filed…all have been dismissed? How can you do this?”.The Court then gave him the same option it had given him earlier occasion: Suraz India Trust would cease to file any further petitions. The petitioner agreed, and the Bench noted that it would assemble at 2pm today to dictate the order..In the order, that took over one hour to be put down, the bench noted that the Court’s time had been wasted indiscriminately. Therefore, it only made sense that this habit of wasting public time be put an end to..Accordingly, it directed that the petitioner be barred from filing PILs across India, and asked him to deposit a cost of 25 lakh rupees with the Apex Court Registry.
