'Courts not tools for electoral gain': HC rejects Mehbooba’s PIL on transfer of undertrial prisoners to J&K

SRINAGAR: The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh on Tuesday dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by PDP chief and former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti seeking the repatriation of undertrial prisoners from jails outside the Union Territory. A division bench of Chief Justice Arun Palli and Justice Rajnesh Oswal found Mehbooba’s petition to be “misconceived.” It observed that courts cannot be employed as an instrument for achieving electoral advantage. The court termed the plea “vague”, devoid of factual foundation and apparently driven by an “explicit purpose of garnering political advantage and positioning herself as a crusader of justice for a particular demographic.”Mufti had moved the PIL seeking the repatriation of undertrial prisoners to Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) from jails and prisons outside the Union Territory. Notably, hundreds of Kashmiri undertrials are currently lodged in prisons outside J&K.“If the petitioner’s claim in the instant matter is assessed against legal parameters established by the Supreme Court in its judgments, it is found that the petitioner in the petition has made general and vague averments that a lot of family members of undertrials have requested her to take up the issues raised by her in this petition with the Government of J&K,” the court observed.The bench noted that the petitioner “has miserably failed” to specify particulars of such families and the undertrial prisoners whose cause she “has claimed to project” through the petition.“The petitioner’s request for omnibus directions is legally unsustainable, particularly as no specific transfer orders have been challenged or even brought on record for the Court’s consideration. Given that the affected undertrials have raised no grievance regarding their transfer to prisons outside UT, the petitioner stands as a third-party stranger to the cause and has no locus standi to invoke the Court’s jurisdiction,” the court said.The court said that lacking material documents and grounded in ambiguity, the petition sought to invoke the writ jurisdiction on the basis of incomplete and unsubstantiated facts, clearly unveiling its political undercurrents.“We cannot lose sight of the fact that the petitioner is President of the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party, a prominent political party in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir but in opposition at present. It appears that the instant petition has been initiated by the petitioner for the explicit purpose of garnering political advantage and positioning herself as a crusader of justice for a particular demographic,” it observed.The division bench ruled that the PIL could not be allowed to be utilised as an instrument for advancing partisan or political agendas or transforming the court into a political platform.“PIL is also not a mechanism for gaining political leverage, and the Courts cannot serve as a forum for electoral campaigns. While political parties possess manifold legitimate avenues to engage with the electorate, courts cannot be employed as an instrument for achieving electoral advantage,” the bench stated.“Notwithstanding the vagueness and ulterior motive that prompted the petitioner to approach the Government and this Court, it is deemed appropriate to observe that under-trials, whose cause the petitioner claims to have projected in this petition, are facing trials before the respective courts. Judicial avenues were/are available to such undertrials for the redressal of any grievance concerning their detention,” it added.Quoting a Supreme Court judgment, the HC bench said a PIL is maintainable only upon a prima facie showing of public interest. “Where such interest is in doubt or compromised by extraneous considerations, the Court must decline to interfere, as preventing the abuse of legal process is, in itself, a matter of significant public interes,” it observed.



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