High Court CJ to hear maintainability of petition challenging hydel projects

TRANSFER PETITION ON HYDEL PROJECTS TO BE WITHDRAWN FROM APEX COURT
GANGTOK, 06 March: The Transfer Petition filed in the Supreme Court regarding the petition against the various hydel projects in the State is to be withdrawn from the apex court. This was submitted before the High Court here by Amrit Singh, counsel for the petitioner, Anand Lama on 05 March.
It was submitted that the petition for transferring the petition from Sikkim High Court to the Supreme Court had been listed for 04 April, 2012 and that it would be withdrawn on the day as the Sikkim High Court had arranged that the matter be taken up before the Single Bench comprising of the Sikkim High Court Chief Justice, Permod Kohli.
Earlier, the matter had come up once before the High Court before Justice SP Wangdi last year who was then officiating as the Acting Chief Justice. The matter had been adjourned for March this year. The high court has decided to take up the matter before a single bench with Justice Wangdi recusing himself from the case. This means that Justice SP Wangdi will not be hearing this petition filed by Anand Lama against the state government and the private power developers. With Chief Justice Kohli stating that one of the two judges, that is, Justice Wangdi, will abstain from hearing the matter the petitioner submitted that the transfer petition filed before the Supreme Court to transfer the case from the High Court to the Supreme Court will be withdrawn.
The matter came up for hearing today before the bench comprising Chief Justice Kohli and Justice Wangdi.
The petition itself concerns the matter of hydel projects being developed by private developers in the State, about 25 of them. It alleges anomalies in awarding of projects, loss to the state exchequer due to acts of omission and commission by the State government among other accusations and calls for the cancellation of the projects. The petition also raises questions on some of the investors in the companies which are developing the hydel projects here.
Appearing for the State government, Advocate General, A Mariarputham, submitted that the matter had come up in the Supreme Court in January following which he had filed replies on behalf of the state respondents. It was, in fact, informed that notices had been issued to only the 3 state respondents to respond and not all the power developers who have been made respondents in the matter.
Chief Justice Kohli said that the matter would be taken up singly by him on 04 April itself, the day the matter is to be withdrawn from the Supreme Court. It was also stated that there would be preliminary hearing on maintainability of the petition on the day.