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High court raps Manohar Joshi for trying to suppress facts

The Bombay high court today came down heavily on former Maharashtra chief minister Manohar Joshi and observed that it was naive of him to have tried to suppress facts from it.

A division bench of the court comprising Justices B N Srikrishna and S S Parkar is dictating its order after hearing two public-interest petitions filed against Joshi and his son-in-law Girish Vyas, a builder in Poona.

The petitions charged that a plot at Prabhat Road, Poona, which had been reserved for a primary school, was dereserved in violation of rules and allotted to Vyas, Joshi's son-in-law, who constructed a multi-storeyed building on it.

The bench said it had expected Joshi to be frank and not file an affidavit like a petty official.

It said Joshi's statement in the affidavit that he had no concern with the matter till July 26, 1996, was a fraud upon the court because on April 24, 1996, he had called for the report of Ramanath Jha, then municipal commissioner of Poona, in the matter.

The bench also noted that Joshi was interested in knowing the progress of the case and was "very much concerned" about it.

The bench, which dictated its judgment for the sixth day today, said public officials against whom such allegations are made couldn't behave like accused in a criminal case and adopt silence as a defence.

It is the duty of the public authority in such cases to put all relevant material before the court. Anything short of this is bound to make the court suspicious, the judges observed.

UNI

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