Janak Vyas

The Bombay HC on Wednesday dismissed two PILs concerning the assembly speaker’s election while questioning the basis for attributing public interest to the issue.

Bombay HC has held that two PILs filed by one Janak Vyas and BJP MLA Girish Mahajan against state’s amended rule of open voting to elect of its assembly speaker are “politically induced litigation”.

The HC slammed another petitioner, a Mumbai resident Janak Vyas who had filed a PIL earlier challenging the new rule as being undemocratic, and questioning his bona fides in filing the petition said, ‘’why bring political battle here in HC?’’

The Bombay HC on Wednesday called out the deterioration of ties between the state’s highest constitutional functionaries—the CM and the governor—saying they “do not trust each other” and this had begun to affect decision-making. The court was referring to the stalemate between Uddhav Thackeray and Bhagat Singh Koshyari over the nomination of 12 members to the legislative council.

The HC said the present petitions “serve only one purpose”—“clog the stream of justice by preventing the Court from considering more deserving cases…’’

The Bombay high court on Monday asked a petitioner to deposit Rs 2 lakh if he wants the court to hear his public interest litigation (PIL) challenging the amendment to the rules and procedure for election of speaker to the Maharashtra legislative assembly, as the state has opposed its

Observing that the approach made by BJP MLA Girish Mahajan raised "suspicion of his bona fides", the Bombay high court on Friday directed him to deposit Rs 10 lakh by March 7 under the court rules if he wants his public interest litigation (PIL) against the new open voting rule for election of the speaker in the Maharashtra legislative assembly to be heard.

His PIL says, “the notification will lead to the death of democracy by giving arbitrary powers to the Chief Minister for appointment of Speaker in the Assembly.’’

Only one in four incidents of theft, robbery and burglary is solved by the Thane police, taking the detection rate of property crimes registered between January and September 2011 to an all-time low of 25% this year.