ANAND TRUST Vs. STATE OF M P

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This order shall govern a common issue, which has arisen for consideration in a bunch of twenty five writ petitions filed by the petitioner, Shri S. P. Anand or Anand Trust, through its trustee Shri S. P. Anand. All the aforesaid writ petitions have been filed from time to time, indicated as Public Interest Litigations. The said writ petitions are WP No. 247 of 2000, WP No. 1051 of 2000, WP No. 881 of 2003, WP No. 971 of 2003, WP No. 1235 of 2004, WP No. 1908 of 2006, WP No. 1924 of 2006, WP No. 1925 of 2006, WP No. 1946 of 2006, WP No. 2637 of 2006, WP No. 2756 of 2006, WP No. 3826 of 2006, WP No. 5430 of 2006, WP No. 5630 of 2006, WP No. 173 of 2007, WP No. 2097 of 2007, WP No. 2648 of 2007, WP No. 2236 of 2009, WP No. 2937 of 2009, WP No. 2997 of 2009, WP No. 3880 of 2009, WP No. 8340 of 2009, WP No. 8964 of 2009, WP No. 9428 of 2009 and WP No. 26 of 2010. For the sake of convenience, the main order is being passed in WP No. 8340 of 2009.

(2.) It would be pertinent to mention here that through this order, we shall deal only with a common legal issue arising in all these writ petitions, without touching the merits of the controversy in any of the petitions. However, separate orders would be passed in each of the writ petitions, for disposal, and therefore, at this stage, while passing the present order, we would not notice the facts at all, of any of the cases.

(3.) A communication dated November 16, 2009 was addressed by the Anand Trust through its trustee, Shri S. P. Anand, to the Principal Registrar of this Bench, accompanied by a copy of the Hindustan Times newspaper dated November 16, 2009. It was requested that either the said communication be treated as a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) or as an application in some of the earlier matters, being RP No. 266/2009 and RP No. 282/2009, which are yet pending before this Court.