S.Rafat Alam, Sudhir Agarwal - (1.) IN this bunch of writ petitions broadly there are three kinds of cases : (A) The leading Writ Petition No. 5520 of 2006, Gayur Hasan v. State of U. P. and others, has been filed seeking a writ of mandamus commanding withdrawal of security from respondent No. 4 and to direct the respondents to arrest him. Similarly, in Writ Petition No. 41892 of 2007, Mohd. Safi v. State of U. P. and others, a mandamus has been sought for withdrawing security provided to respondent No. 4. It is common ground in both these writ petitions that the respondent No. 4 therein are the persons of tainted character involved in criminal activities inasmuch, in Gayur Hasan (supra), the respondent No. 4, i.e., Meharban was wanted in a case under Section 302, I.P.C. and though had not been arrested yet was provided security guard. Similarly, Lakhpati Singh (respondent No. 4 in Writ Petition No. 41892 of 2007) is also said to be an anti-social element but on the strength of an order, he has obtained from this Court in a writ petition, has obtained security and strengthened thereby is misusing besides harassing the petitioner ; (B) The second set of writ petitions are those where a mandamus has been sought directing the respondents to provide the facility of gunner/ security at the cost of Government, i.e., free of cost or on payment of nominal cost etc. ; (C) The third set of writ petitions are those where security was earlier provided but having been withdrawn for one or the other reason, it has been prayed that the order of withdrawal be quashed and the respondents be directed to provide security as was already granted and/or to provide higher level of security.
(2.) IT would be interesting to notice at this stage that in the third category of the writ petitions all the writ petitions have been filed by the persons who are or were holding political positions like Member of Legislative Assembly or Member of Parliament and some of them were also ministers or otherwise are high positioned political persons. Some of the writ petitions have been filed by the elected members of other local bodies, current or former, and some are liquor contractor or big businessman etc. Though on the first flush, all the three sets of cases appear to be slightly different but considering the common pivotal issue involved therein, all were clubbed together by the Court since it found that it would be expedient to consider the wider question in the context of the matter of providing security or expediency of continuing with the gunner or security personnel with individuals considering the facts that in many of the cases even the persons who have criminal antecedents involved in heinous crimes got security personnel at the cost of Government. In many of the cases security persons were available to the persons enjoying political influence and that too at the cost of State exchequer, i.e., tax payer's cost. Virtually this Court considering the astounding facts has to observe that acquiring the facility of gunner/security personnel has become a fashion denoting status symbol and that too at the cost of compromising security of ordinary person for whom actually the entire system owe its duty.
(3.) IN this background a Division Bench consisting of Hon'ble Imtiyaz Murtaza and Hon'ble Amar Saran, JJ., on 25.5.2006 passed a detailed order requiring the State of U. P. to submit a report indicating the number of persons who have been provided security in the last one year, the reasons for security given in each case, the period for which security was given, whether any payment has been taken for providing security, if required, under the Government order for one or more security personnel, the basis for providing additional security and whether there has been periodical reviews of the need for security by the committee as provided by the Government order etc. Various orders were passed from time to time subsequently in the matter and it is not necessary to refer all such orders at this stage to avoid bulkness. Suffice it to say that this Court found a large number of cases where the security was provided to ineligible persons on the consideration of political patronage and, therefore, directions were issued for withdrawal of security from such persons. It was also noticed that in a large number of cases where the security was provided on payment but the actual payment was not realised from the person concerned, influenced by his position or the political or administrative influence he could exercise, and, therefore, under the directions of this Court the authorities were compelled to realise such amount and it was ultimately informed to the Court that as a matter of fact several crores of rupees were realised from such persons.;