Lucknow, Jan 19 (PTI) The Allahabad High Court has takenserious note of non-filing of reply by the Centre for overthree months despite several opportunities in a sensitive casechallenging the legality of detention of a person.
Initially, the Centre was granted four weeks on October13 last year to file the reply by the High Court in a habeascorpus petition relating to the alleged detention of a personinvolved in meat business. Again on November 21, 2017, twomore weeks were granted.
However, despite the expiry of a period of about threemonths, no counter affidavit by the Union of India till date,the court noted in its order passed yesterday.
Habeas corpus plea relates to the legality of arrest ordetention or imprisonment of a person.
The Lucknow bench of High Court was hearing a plea filedby Gonda resident Dilbahar, through his lawyers Amul ManiTripathi and Vimlesh Mani Tripathi, who had filed the habeascorpus plea against his preventive detention.
Irked at the approach of the Centre, a bench of JusticesDinesh Kumar Singh and D K Upadhyaya said, "we cannotappreciate the situation that even in a period of threemonths, counter affidavit could not be filed.
"The matter at hand relates to preventive detention ofthe petitioner where his personal liberty is involved. We,therefore, provide that in case within two weeks from today nocounter affidavit is filed, the Court may proceed ex-parte andthe averments made in the writ petition qua the CentralGovernment may be treated to be uncontroverted," the benchsaid in the order.
At this juncture, Assistant Solicitor General of IndiaS B Pandey assured the HC that he would personally deliberatethe issues relating to filing of the counter affidavit in allHabeas Corpus petitions with the Home Secretary.
He said he would ensure that a more effective mechanismis evolved so that such important matters are contested moreeffectively. PTI PKS SJK RKSARC.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.