New Delhi, May 3
The Delhi High Court refused to hear a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) following the petitioner’s failure to explain the contents of his plea.
A Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice B C Patel and Justice A K Sikri on Monday, dismissed the petition and imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on the petitioner, social worker S C Jain, after he admitted to being ignorant about the contents of his plea, filed through counsel Sugriva Dubey.
The petitioner could not answer the questions posed by the jury. On April 23, the judges had posted the matter for today wanting to ascertain the locus of the petitioner in filing the petition.
Later, outside the Court Mr Jain, who had studied only up to Class V, said that he had become nervous on been questioned by the bench.
The petition had opposed the move to set up a slaughterhouse in the Trans-Yamuna area of Ghazipur in East Delhi, saying it would hinder the efforts to revive Hindon Air Force Station as a ‘scrambling base’ for Indian Air Force (IAF) fighters to intercept any hostile or rogue aircraft, which intrudes into the national Capital’s airspace.
It said that the airbase had to be closed in 1997, after seven air force MIGs crashed because of bird hits.
If a slaughterhouse was built at the sanitary land fill-site in Ghazipur, which was only four km from the airbase, the Hindon Air Force Station could never be made a scrambling base as animal slaughtering would surely attract birds, it added.
After the Parliament attack on December 13, 2001, the Joint Command and Analysis Centre, comprising IAF and civil aviation experts, had decided to revive the airbase and use it as a scrambling base to appropriately tackle any threat from the sky to the city or its vital installations.
In the event of an emergency, the Hindon airbase could reduce the IAF’s response time to less than five minutes from about 20 minutes required at present, for the nearest fighter bases were at Ambala and Sirsa.
Construction of a slaughterhouse and absence of a Carcass Utilisation Centre would throw a spanner in the efforts to revive the airbase, the petition said.
Besides, setting up a slaughterhouse would cause water and air pollution and violate the provisions of the Delhi Preservation of Trees Act and animal transportation laws, it added.
