Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi : The Supreme court relaxed congress party on Friday and stayed a Delhi High Court order to the Associated Journals Ltd (AJL) — publisher of Congress mouth piece National Herald –to vacate the Herald House building in the national capital.
While staying the February 28 order of the Delhi High Court, a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi also issued notice to the Centre’s Land and Development Office (L&DO) on AJL’s petition.
The top court asked the Centre and L&DO to respond to AJL’s petition in four weeks.
AJL had on March 11 moved the Supreme Court against a Delhi High Court order dismissing its plea to restrain the Centre from taking coercive steps to vacate Herald House in the national capital.
In its appeal filed in the top court, AJL alleged that the BJP and its coalition at the Centre harboured a “pathological animus” to the ideas of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
“The eviction proceedings have been initiated for the purposes of scuttling the voice of democratic dissent of the Congress Party. It is a clear affront to the freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution and a deliberate attempt to suppress and destroy the legacy of the first Prime Minister of the country i.e. Jawaharlal Nehru, who was the guiding light for the publications of the petitioner-company,” it said.
AJL requested the court to set aside the Centre’s October 30, 2018 order ending its 56-year-old lease and asking it to vacate the premises on the grounds that no printing or publishing activity was going on and that the building was being used only for commercial purposes.
A Division Bench of the Delhi High Court had on February 28 dismissed AJL’s plea against the Centre’s order to vacate the premises, holding that there had been “misuse” of lease conditions by AJL. It had upheld a single judge’s December 2018 order dismissing AJL’s plea against the Centre’s eviction order and had directed it to vacate Herald House in two weeks.
The High Court had held that the entire transaction of transferring shares of AJL to Young Indian (YI) company — in which Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi are majority shareholders — was a “clandestine and surreptitious transfer of the lucrative interest in the premises” to YI.
The Centre and Land and Development Office (L&DO) had said in their eviction order that no press had been functioning on the premises for at least past 10 years and it was being used only for commercial purposes in violation of the lease deed.
The high court had agreed with the Centre’s submission that the breach of lease condition had been continuing from 2008 till commencement of the digital publication of the newspaper on November 14, 2016.
Denying all these allegations, AJL urged the top court to restrain the Centre from taking “any coercive steps qua the demised premises or from pursuing any remedy available under the Public Premises Act during the pendency of the instant Special Leave Petition” as an interim relief.
The L&DO had ended the lease, entered into with the AJL on August 2, 1962 and made perpetual on January 10, 1967, asking the company to hand over the possession by November 15, 2018.
AJL had said the digital versions of English newspaper National Herald, Hindi’s Navjivan and Urdu’s Qaumi Awaz have commenced from 2016-17. The weekly newspaper ‘National Herald on Sunday’ resumed on September 24, 2017, and the place of publication was the ITO premises, the AJL said, adding the Hindi weekly newspaper Sunday Navjivan was being published since October last year from the same premises.
Describing the high court’s order as biased and mala fide, AJL contended its publication espoused the ideology of Congress party — the largest opposition party in India.
