- (1.) HEARD the petitioner, who addressed the Court in person and Sri Asit Kumar Chaturvedi, who has put in his appearance on behalf of respondents.
(2.) THIS petition draped as a Public Interest Litigation has been filed with the following prayers: - "1.Issue a writ of mandamus directing the concerned respondents to refrain from publishing such government advertisements (as presented in Annexure No.2 or otherwise) which do not present any pertinent, useful and relevant facts/information before the people but are very apparently self -publicity material of and for the people in power occupying public post/positions, which can very easily and clearly be understood as the waste and misuse of public money for selfish and self -oriented goals of individuals and political entities. 2. Issue a writ of mandamus directing the concerned respondents for restricting the respondents from publishing any kind of sycophantic advertisement (as presented in Annexure No.2 or otherwise) published solely for publishing and glorifying the alleged achievements of the Union government with one or more individuals kept in mind. 3. Issue a writ of mandamus directing the concerned respondents not to publicize the photographs and activities of such persons, with specific reference to political entities, who are not occupying any definite executive/constitutional posts, juxtaposed to the photographs of the Prime Minister of India, other Ministers of the Union government and other constitutional functionaries in such a manner as to give a clearly visible indication and impression that the Chairman/ President of these political parties/entities stand equivalent in status and dignity to the constitutional authorities."
(3.) THE issue raised in this petition had earlier engaged attention of this Court in another writ petition filed purportedly in public interest i.e. Writ Petition No.7444 (M/B) of 2013, Asok Pande vs Union of India and others which was dismissed by this Court by means of order dated 23.08.2013. The said order dated 23.08.2013 has been annexed by the petitioner herself as annexure no.1 to the writ petition. From a perusal of the order dated 23.08.2013 dismissing the aforementioned writ petition, it is apparent that prayer made in the said writ petition was to issue a mandamus directing the Cabinet Secretary and Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting of the Government of India to prohibit all the departments and public sector undertakings from publishing photographs of political leaders who are not holding any government office and that such prohibition should also cover photographs of Ms. Sonia Gandhi for the reason that she does not hold any post in the Union of India but is actually the Chairperson of United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in various advertisements which are published by different departments in the newspapers, television or elsewhere from time to time.;