The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Allahabad High Court to give an urgent hearing on a plea filed by Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar Trust challenging termination of Rampur Public School’s lease.
A bench headed by CJI D.Y. Chandrachud and comprising of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra ordered that the application seeking an urgent interim relief against sealing of premises will be considered by a bench presided over by the Acting Chief Justice of the High Court.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing on behalf of the petitioner trust, said the plea against the decision of the state authorities was instituted in February this year and the High Court should have passed the interim relief in the matter.
The senior counsel pleaded that the High Court kept the interim application pending and proceeded to hear the writ petition and reserved the judgment. Later in July, the High Court released the matter saying that it requires to be heard afresh.
“The said action of the Hon’ble Court has effectively rendered the application for urgent interim reliefs infructuous insofar as the academic year 2023-24 was concerned and has resulted in grave prejudice being caused to the petitioner as well as to almost 1,500 students mostly from weak economic backgrounds who were studying in Rampur Public School,” said the special leave petition filed through advocate Lzafeer Ahmad B.F.
Earlier in March this year, the Allahabad High Court had expressed ‘strong displeasure’ over sealing of Rampur Public School and had directed to open classrooms required for internal examination of students from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. for two days.
The Rampur Public School’s lease had expired in January this year and accordingly, the minorities welfare officer of Rampur had directed that the building be vacated. When the school building was not vacated, the Rampur district administration sealed the entire premises.
Against this, the executive committee of Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar Trust moved the Allahabad High Court with a demand to quash the decision of the district administration.
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