NEW DELHI: Filing PILs has become an industry and a career in itself, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said in the High Court while defending the appointment of Rakesh Asthana as the Delhi Police Commissioner.
“(They say) there are good officers. Who are they? Are they the persons who possibly felt aggrieved? PIL is an industry, a career by itself, which was not envisaged,” Mehta argued before a bench headed by Chief Justice D N Patel which reserved its verdict on lawyer Sadre Alam’s PIL against Asthana’s appointment.
Mehta stated that Asthana was appointed as Delhi Police Commissioner after following the due procedure, as applicable to the national capital, and a PIL could not be permitted to be a ‘forum for settling scores’.
Senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi, representing Asthana, claimed before the bench that the petitioner was “a proxy for somebody who does not want to come in the front” and holds “personal vendetta”.
Both Centre and Asthana objected to the intervention plea filed by Centre for Public Interest Litigation, which has already moved the apex court against the appointment.
“The very fact that the same procedure was followed eight times and never questioned is ground enough to accept my submission that there is something other than public interest,” Mehta stated.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing CPIL, stated the Centre’s stand that it found no eligible officers in the UT cadre for appointment as police chief was ‘astounding’ and had a ‘demoralising effect’.
Earlier, the Centre had contended that it felt a compelling need to appoint a person who had diverse and vast experience for the top post.