A petition to look into the amount of money spent on the Dussehra rally that the Maharashtra Chief Minister, Eknath Shinde, organised this year was ‘taken from board’ by a Bombay High Court bench on Friday.
The bench of Justices AS Gadkari and PD Naik refused to hear the plea and reasoned that due to the nature of the petition’s requests, a public interest litigation (PIL) rather than a writ petition should have been filed. Nitin Satpute, the petitioner’s attorney, was told by the bench to ‘comply with prescribed norms.’ Satpute decided to file a PIL after agreeing to convert the plea.
Approximately two lakh individuals from all over the state attended the rally on October 5 at Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), says the petition.
A probe by the CBI, ED, or the Mumbai police’s economic crime wing was demanded in the plea, which was submitted by a social worker from Mumbai’s Kandivali East neighbourhood.
The appeal says that, the state forced the 1,700 buses operated by the government-owned Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation into action to transport people to the political event.
Additionally, it was asserted that Shinde paid State Transport at least Rs 10 crore for this service in addition to paying individuals who assisted with extra duties during the protest.
The petition says, Shinde is the head of an unregistered party and the chief minister of an unrecognised government. According to the petition, the question of ‘Who spent all this money on the rally?’ arises because Shinde’s group is not a registered political party.
In the complaint, it was claimed that Maharashtrians suffered as a result of the lack of buses for daily commuters.
The petition also claims that, the Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi highway was used to transport attendees of the BKC rally rather than being made open to the general public, which led to a significant collision near Daulatabad but no fatalities.
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