Selfie case: Gujarat HC registry almost defied ruling on PM

AHMEDABAD: After Gujarat high court withdrew its order of admission of petition against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for breaching the election code of conduct by clicking a selfie with the party symbol, its registry had almost issued a notice to Modi.
Had it not been for timely intervention by the petitioner’s lawyer, the high court’s notice would have been issued to the PM.It was to prevent issuance of this notice to Modi that the state law officers had rushed to court and requested to grant one more chance to argue the matter even after it had admitted the case.
On September 28, Justice Udhwani admitted the petition but when advocate general (AG) Kamal Trivedi urged for one more opportunity to place Supreme Court orders in defence of lower court’s decision, the judge held back its decision and kept the case for further hearing on October 6. The court order categorically mentioned that the court issued rule, meaning thereby admitted the petition.
“The clerk in registry might have read word ‘rule’ in the third line of the order and without reading it further, he sent the matter for further process in the department from where notices are issued. These guys have to deal with 100-150 matters daily. The matter reached for process and my clerk brought the order to me. I immediately approached head of concerned department and then mentioned the issue before Justice Udhwani to stop the process,” said advocate Koshti, who represents the petitioner—an Aam Aadmi Party worker Nishant Varma.
Sources said that the judge immediately summoned officials from the registry and took them to task for not reading the orders properly and for acting mechanically.
Advocate Koshti, who had strongly opposed AG’s request for another chance and court’s decision on the ground that the state government was only concerned that notice should not be issued to Modi, said, “It was my moral duty to bring this to court’s notice to stop the process.”
In this case, Varma moved the HC after the chief judicial magistrate at Ahmedabad rural court junked his request on May 11 for addition of charges against Modi, who was BJP’s prime ministerial candidate then, for his selfie as well as holding a press conference after casting his vote in Ranip on April 30, 2014.