Kriti Agrawal
The Delhi High Court took Suo motu cognizance of the question of 100 rooms being requisitioned in the Ashoka Hotel for High Court Judges and judicial officers and their families on Tuesday.
The bench of Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Rekha Palli, described the order and subsequent news coverage as “very, very misleading” and stated that the order never asked for 100 rooms to be requisitioned in a 5-star hotel, especially for judges.
The court called it “patently discriminatory,” stating that,“The government cannot establish a facility that is unique to any class.”
The bench asked, “Would we as an institution take priority when people are dying on the road?”
On this Suo motu case, the court also issued a notice to the Delhi government and will hear the matter on Thursday.
The order in question was issued by the Chanakyapuri Sub-Divisional Magistrate’s office on Sunday, invoking the powers granted by the Disaster Management Act 2005 and the Delhi Epidemic Diseases covid-19 Regulations 2020.
This order said, among other things, that a request has been received from the Delhi High Court for the establishment of the CHC facility for the Hon’ble Justices and other judicial officers of the Delhi High Court and their families.
The court, on the other hand, said on Tuesday that it had not made such a submission. It said that it had simply expressed the need for a facility to the authorities, given that judges from the subordinate judiciary had to conduct physical courts.
Justice Sanghi said, “Many have gotten infected, their families have gotten infected and 2 judicial officers have died. Our concern was as their well-wishers, as it falls upon us to take care of them. All we wanted was that if they need hospital admission, a facility should be available, we never asked to make any such facility with 100 beds.”
In response, senior advocate Rahul Mehra, who represents the Delhi government in various petitions and applications filed in Delhi regarding Covid-19 management, accused the media of playing a “mischievous game.”
The judges, on the other hand, said that the “media is not wrong because the order is wrong.”