The Madras high court has rejected the plea to issue quo warranto against General Vijay Kumar Singh, questioning under what authority he was holding the post of Chief of Army Staff.
Imposing a cost of Rs 1 lakh on the petitioner Dr S. Vishwa Murti, founder chairman of Awareness on Anti-corruption and Crime, a division bench of Justices Elipe Dharma Rao and M. Venugopal said the petitioner had wasted the court’s time and directed him to pay the cost to the Madras Society for Protection of Children, Old Washermenpet within two weeks.
The bench concurred with the submissions of additional solicitor general of south India M. Ravindran that V.K. Singh had been validly appointed and said the petitioner and his counsel were unable to answer several queries raised by the court.
“When a specific question was put to counsel for the petitioner with regard to the principles enunciated by the Supreme Court in the matter of quo warranto, he was unable to answer.
When the bench asked the counsel to state the reason and necessity to issue quo warranto when the matter was admittedly entrusted to the CBI for enquiry, he was unable to answer,” the bench said.
It concluded that the petitioner had not approached the court with clean hands and bonafide intentions. The bench permitted the counsel for the petitioner to withdraw the petition and dismissed it as withdrawn.
In his petition, Murti submitted that General Singh was the first serving officer of the Indian Army to drag the defence ministry to the Supreme Court with regard to his date of birth issue.
However, he withdrew his case subsequently. He had also given an interview to the media alleging that an army officer had offered him a bribe of Rs 14 crore for purchase of 600 sub-standard vehicles manufactured by Tatra but did not identify the officer initially.
This amounted to intentional omission to give information of the offence, which he was legally bound to, Murti said.
The petitioner wanted the Army chief to be stripped of his post for having embarrassed the government by alleging that the army’s tanks were out of ammunition and that infantry preparedness was also not up to the mark.