The appointment of a Monitory Authority to probe all “fake encounters” in Gujarat on Friday ran into a controversy with the SC disapproving the Modi government’s notification for appointing former Bombay HC chief justice K.R. Vyas as its head without consulting the apex court.
As the Gujarat government came under attack from the apex court as well as counsel for journalist B.G. Verghese and Bollywood lyricist Javed Akahtar, who had filed PILs for the probe, state’s additional advocate-general Tushar Mehta at one point questioned why the Gujarat government was being “singularly” targeted while such encounters were taking place in several other states.
“The state share the anxiety of the court on human rights, I share the anxiety of the petitioners on the human rights, but why this is confined to Gujarat only,” Mr Mehta said while alleging that a political party had not even spared Justice Vyas and attacked him soon after he was named the head of Monitoring Authority even though he had been the had of Maharashtra state’s human rights commission earlier. As the atmosphere in the court looked charged up, a bench of Justice Aftab Alam and Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai adjourned the hearing for Monday.
However, at the very beginning of the proceedings, the bench disapproved the state’s notification issued only on Thursday without waiting for the Friday hearing.
Justice Vyas appointed as the Monitory Authority chief after former Supreme Court judge M.B. Shah, whose name was earlier cleared by the top court declined to continue on health grounds. “We should have been told about the proposal for the appointment of new chairman,” Justice Alam, heading the bench told senior advocate Ranjit Kumar, who also appeared for Gujarat along with Mr Mehta.