New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday imposed a penalty of Rs 50,000 on RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav for “wasting precious judicial time” by filing a plea to retain his current bungalow.
A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi pulled up the younger son of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav while taking up his appeal against the Bihar government’s order asking him to vacate the bungalow allotted to him while he was the deputy chief minister.
“What is this luxury of litigation? Precious judicial time is being wasted by you,” observed the CJI as soon as senior lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi stood up to argue Tejashwi’s appeal. The bench then dismissed his plea while imposing a cost of Rs 50,000 on him for moving the petition.
Single judge and a division bench had dismissed Tejashwi’s plea against the state government’s order through the estate officer to swap his accommodation with his successor Sushil Modi.
The sprawling bungalow at 5, Deshratan Marg was allotted to Yadav in 2015 upon his appointment as the deputy chief minister of the then ‘grand alliance’ government headed by Nitish Kumar. Even after RJD lost power in the state, Tejashwi continues to stay in the same bungalow.
The Patna High Court in its order on Yadav’s petition had said “the petitioner has been allotted a bungalow matching his status as a minister in the government at 1, Polo Road, Patna…He cannot raise complaint on the decision so taken simply because the present bungalow is more suited to him.”
Tejashwi, however, had decided to move in appeal to the Supreme Court against this order.