• Dismisses Mehbooba’s Plea; Terms Her ‘Third-Party Stranger With No Locus Standi’
• ‘Petition Reflects Political Undercurrents Rather Than Genuine Public Cause’

Srinagar– Observing that the plea reflected “political undercurrents rather than a genuine public cause”, the High Court of J&K and Ladakh on Tuesday dismissed a petition filed by PDP chief and former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti seeking the repatriation of undertrial prisoners from jails outside the Union Territory in “purported public interest”. The court held that the plea lacked material documents and was founded on ambiguity.

Underlining that Public Interest Litigation cannot be used to advance partisan or political agendas, a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Arun Palli and Justice Rajnesh Oswal said that PILs are not instruments for gaining political leverage or for converting courts into platforms for electoral campaigns.

“While political parties possess manifold legitimate avenues to engage with the electorate, courts cannot be employed as an instrument for achieving electoral advantage,” the Court said.

Dismissing the plea 35 days after reserving its verdict, the Court said the petition sought to invoke its writ jurisdiction on the basis of “incomplete and unsubstantiated facts”.

It noted that Mehbooba’s plea made only “general and vague averments” claiming that several families of undertrial prisoners had approached her, but failed to disclose their identities, the particulars of the undertrials, the nature of cases against them, or the specific transfer orders under which they were lodged outside the Union Territory.

The Court observed that the detention of undertrials outside J&K is not a universal practice, but is based on individual, case-specific orders issued by competent authorities.

“Lacking material documents and grounded in ambiguity, the petition seeks to invoke the writ jurisdiction on the basis of incomplete and unsubstantiated facts, clearly unveiling its political undercurrents,” the Court said.

“We cannot lose sight of the fact that the petitioner is the President of the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party, a prominent political party in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir but in opposition at present,” the Court said, adding, “Further, it appears that the instant petition has been initiated by the petitioner for the explicit purpose of garnering political advantage and positioning herself as a crusader of justice for a particular demographic.”

Emphasising the region’s violent past and its special circumstances, the Court noted that while the petitioner herself acknowledged the possibility of “unavoidable and compelling necessity” for detaining undertrials outside the UT in exceptional cases, she had failed to detail such exceptions.

The Court also pointed out that undertrials have adequate judicial remedies and access to a robust legal aid framework to challenge their detention or transfer, and that the fact none of the allegedly aggrieved undertrials had approached the court indicated the absence of a genuine grievance.

“Notwithstanding the aforementioned vagueness and the ulterior motive that prompted the petitioner to approach the Government and this Court, it is deemed appropriate to observe that under-trials, whose cause, the petitioner claims to have projected in this petition, are facing trials before the respective courts.”

Judicial avenues were and continue to be available to such undertrials for redressal of any grievance concerning their detention, the Court said.

Holding that the petitioner lacked locus standi and that the plea was legally unsustainable, the High Court dismissed the petition as “misconceived”.

“Given that the affected undertrials have raised no grievance regarding their transfer to prisons outside U.T of Jammu and Kashmir, the petitioner (Mehbooba) stands as a third-party stranger to the cause and has no locus standi to invoke the Court’s jurisdiction,” the Court said, underlining that a PIL is maintainable only upon a prima facie showing of public interest.

“Where such interest is in doubt or compromised by extraneous considerations, the Court must decline to interfere, as preventing the abuse of legal process is, in itself, a matter of significant public interest,” the Court said while dismissing the petition.

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