RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, May 6: Chief Minister Hemant Soren, in his reply to the Jharkhand High Court’s notice in a public interest litigation today said that the motive behind the PIL is not public interest but to destabilise the democratically elected government with the help of opposition BJP.
The PIL, which was scheduled to be heard today, has been filed by RTI activist Shiv Shanker Sharma. The hearing was postponed after the bench dis not sit.
To support the ground, Soren said he received a notice on May 2, 2022 from the Election Commission of India requiring him to reply to a petition dated February 14, 2022 submitted by the BJP. He said that allegations levelled by the BJP and the petitioner are the same.
Soren said the petition was filed solely out of the personal enmity which the petitioner (Shiv Shanker Sharma) and his family harbours for his family for more than two decades. He said that the petitioner’s father, Dr Gautam Sharma, had testified as a witness for the prosecution in Session No. 3 of 2006 before the additional session judge of Tis Hazari Court in New Delhi seeking to falsely implicate his father Shibu Soren.
Regarding the mining lease on which the PIL is based, Soren said he did not receive any benefit from that. He admitted that the mining lease was originally granted to him for a period of 10 years on May 17, 2008. He applied for renewal of this lease in 2018 but the application lapsed. When the deputy commissioner of the district invited a fresh application for the said mining lease sometime in 2021, he applied and the lease was granted in his favour after he had duly complied with the procedure prescribed in the Jharkhand Minor Mineral Concession Rule 2004 and amended from time to time.
Soren said he did not obtain consent to operate the mining lease and on February 4, 2022 he applied to surrender the lease before commencing any extraction and the same was subsequently accepted upon payment of prescribed fees.
