Shimla : A day before the Himachal Pradesh high court hears the BJP’s petition challenging the appointment of six chief parliamentary secretaries, the Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu-led Congress government on Friday filed a plea to transfer the case to the apex court.
The opposition BJP had challenged the appointment of the six chief parliamentary secretaries, Sanjay Awasthi from Arki assembly constituency, Sundar Singh from Kullu, Ram Kumar from Doon, Mohan Lal Brakta from Rohru, Ashish Butail from Palampur and Kishori Lal from Baijnath in the Himachal Pradesh high court on — and the case comes up for hearing on Saturday.
In a bid to buy time, the Congress government filed the transfer petition in the Supreme Court under Article 139A of the Constitution. It has requested that the petition of Kalpana Devi vs Government of Himachal Pradesh and others, Satpal Singh Satti vs Government of Himachal and others, and NGO People for Responsible Governance vs state government and others, be transferred to the apex court.
It argued that the petitions of State of West Bengal vs Vishak Bhattacharya, State of Punjab vs Jagmohan Singh Bhatti, and Rakesh Chaudhary vs State of Chhattisgarh are pending in the Supreme Court and have legal similarities with the petitions filed in the Himachal Pradesh high court.
The Himachal Pradesh high court bench of justice Vivek Singh Thakur and justice BC Negi had rejected the state government’s application in the matter of the appointment of a deputy chief minister and the chief parliamentary secretaries and declared them unconstitutional.
The BJP petitions said that such appointments were made in Punjab also and were challenged before the Punjab and Haryana high court after which they were declared unconstitutional. Similar cases were filed in the Supreme Court from Assam and Manipur and the appointments were declared unconstitutional.
