The Allahabad High Court on Monday declined to entertain a PIL seeking an independent probe into the alleged misappropriation of donations at the Ram temple in Ayodhya, observing that a petition on the same issue is already pending before the Supreme Court.
A Bench of Justices Rajan Roy and Manjive Shukla disposed of the PIL filed by local advocate Mohit Ashok, noting that a similar petition filed by Ajay Kumar Rai is already under consideration before the apex court.
During the hearing, the bench also came down heavily on the petitioner for giving interviews to the media even before the matter could be heard. The court observed that such conduct appeared to be an attempt to gain cheap publicity and cautioned the petitioner against repeating it in future.
The plea also sought directions for an audit of the temple’s finances by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).
At the very outset of the hearing, Additional Advocate General Vinod Kumar Shahi informed the bench that the Supreme Court, while hearing a similar petition filed by Rai, had on June 29 directed that the matter should be listed after the summer vacations.
Taking note of the submission, the bench went through the records of the Supreme Court petition and order of June 29, and then observed, “On a perusal of the writ petition, specially the relief clause, and comparing it with the relief clause herein, we find that reliefs prayed in this writ petition are substantially similar to the one prayed in the aforesaid writ petition (of Supreme Court).”
The bench accordingly held that since the issue was already pending before the Supreme Court, there was no justification for it to examine the same controversy. The bench, accordingly, disposed of the PIL without going into its merits.
