HC slaps cost of Rs 3 lakh against RS Secretariat employee

The Delhi High Court today slapped a cost of Rs 3 lakh on a Rajya Sabha Secretariat employee for challenging the appointment of two additional secretaries in the department saying he had filed five pleas on the similar issue.
The high court, which dismissed the plea, said arguments by the petitioner need to be put down with "heavy hands" since the fresh plea was filed when others were still pending.
Justice Valmiki J Mehta dismissed the plea by S N Sahu, also an employee of the Rajya Sabha Secretariat, in which he had sought cancellation of appointments of the two officials as additional secretaries on the ground of alleged illegalities.

The court noted in its order that the petitioner contended that this was the sixth writ petition filed by him before the court, "but there is no such law that earlier writ petitions which are pending and admitted for hearing can become non-existent and nullity".
"This concept of filing a new writ petition essentially for getting earlier admitted writ petitions heard is an unheard concept and argument and needs to be put down with heavy hands," the court said.
"Petitioner cannot expect that there is only one case of his in this court for being decided and this court does not have cases of hundreds and thousands of other petitioners who are silently waiting for their turn in queue for their cases to be heard on merits," it said.

The court said, "In view of the above, this writ petition is dismissed with costs of Rs 3 lakh noting that petitioner has enough money for filing sequential judicial proceedings in this court. Costs be deposited by the petitioner within four weeks from today with the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund".

The court further said that it was not clear from the plea as to which statutory provision was violated in appointments of these two officials.
It said the plea was "nothing but an abuse of the process of law" as the petitioner has filed repeated petitions on the same set of facts.

"No doubt, there may be cosmetic and minor changes here and there in the repeated writ petitions but in essence most of the writ petitions are filed on the same facts and causes of action as will be demonstrated below," it said.
In his plea, Sahu had alleged that there were illegalities on the part of Rajya Sabha Secretariat in appointment of these two officials.