Mukul Rohtagi, who appears for Gujarat government and chief minister Narender Modi in certain matters pending in SC, argued for Congress-ruled Maharashtra government.
In a major relief to Maharashtra government, the Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed a Bombay High Court order asking it to submit on August 6 the sensitive 26/11 Pradhan committee report, personal presence of anti-terrorism squad chief KP Raghuvanshi before it, and the chief secretary to inform it about the action to be taken on the report about the Pakistan-trained terrorists’ strikes Mumbai last year.
“We are really sorry for what happened in Mumbai,” the apex court expressed its concern, “But what purpose would be served to make the findings of the Ram Pradhan panel public,” asked a bench headed by chief justice K G Balakrishnan while hearing Maharashtra government’s appeal taking strong objection to the HC order. It fixed August 21 to hear the petition.
Surprisingly, Mukul Rohtagi, who appears for Gujarat government and chief minister Narender Modi in certain matters pending in SC, argued for Congress-ruled Maharashtra government.
Former solicitor general Harish Salve also argued that no useful purpose would be served in making the Pradhan panel report public. Rather, it would give fodder to the TV channels for discussing threadbare the security aspects that could be prejudicial to citizens’ safety.
Society for Indian Law Firms (SILF) headed by Lalit Bhasin, a Mumbai-based lawyer VP Patil and the Indian Merchants Chamber had moved HC seeking a direction to the state to make public the Pradhan committee report and also to inform what action has been taken against top police and intelligence officers for failing to prevent the terror attacks.
Bhasin said that a committee set up by the state government to act on the panel recommendations has not started functioning yet nor has the state government done anything to prevent the recurrence of such attacks.
The Maharashtra government had set up a panel comprising former bureaucrat Ram Pradhan and former RAW official V Balachandran to go into different aspects of the Mumbai attacks.
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