No relief for Gadhada Swaminarayan trust

A division bench of the Gujarat High Court on Tuesday refused to entertain the plea filed by Gopinathji Devmandir Trust challenging the order of a single judge bench of the court against it, which was pronounced on February 6.

The single judge bench of Justice Bela Trivedi had severely criticised the trust, more particularly its chairman Kanu Kanani, for filing a frivolous petition against the election officer appointed by the Supreme Court for supervising the trust's election scheduled on December 13. It had also imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on Kanani, while dismissing the petition.

The apex court had appointed retired Gujarat High Court justice SM Soni as the election officer and directed him to conduct the elections within eight weeks, which ended on February 7. Fed up of the mudslinging, Justice Soni tendered his resignation as the election officer, which resulted in Justice Trivedi coming down heavily on Kanani.

The division bench of acting Chief Justice AS Dave and Justice Biren Vaishnav, which took up the matter on Tuesday, remarked that there was no need for the court to interfere in the single judge's order. The court also clarified that it is not going to expunge any of the remarks made by the single judge in her order and the trust can move the Supreme Court.

Sensing the mood of the court, Kanani thought it best to withdraw the petition, which was allowed by the court, with a liberty of being able to approach the Supreme Court. Counsel for Kanani told DNA that post resignation of Justice Soni, the trust, anyway, had to approach the SC for appointment of a new election officer for conducting the trust's election.

Justice Trivedi had questioned the maintainability of the petition against the election authority, questioning the locus standi of Kanani, who tried to raise similar issues which had been already settled by the apex court, by making derogatory and contemptuous averments in the petition.

The bench said, "The present petition clearly appears to have been filed in defiance of the order passed by consensus by the Supreme Court, by raising the issues already decided by the Supreme Court, and raising controversies against the election authority appointed by the Supreme Court, dragging the said authority into the litigation, and that too, at the instance of the so-called chairman of the petitioner-trust. The court, therefore, is of the opinion that the petition deserves to be dismissed with cost."

ALLEGATIONS

The single judge bench had severely criticised the trust, more particularly its chairman Kanu Kanani, for filing a frivolous petition against the election officer appointed by the Supreme Court for supervising the trust’s election scheduled for December 13