Place Banerjee panel report in HC before June 21

Ahmedabad, May 1 (UNI) The Gujarat High Court today thwarted attempt by the Centre and Railway Ministry to place the final U C Banerjee report in Parliament, currently in session.

A division bench ordered that the Banerjee report be placed before the court before June 21. The court would first look into the report, the bench said.

Last year, a single judge of the high court Justice D N Patel had declared that the Banerjee report was null and void and its constitution illegal. Today's order follows a LPA filed by the Centre and Railways against Justice D N Patel's order of last year.

The counsel of the Centre and the Railways argued that since Parliament is in session and the Banerjee panel has already submitted its final report to the Railway ministry, this report should be allowed to be placed in Parliament.

Both of them also submitted that the report would be placed in Parliament without prejudice to the original petitioner Neelkant Bhatia as the appellant only wanted to table the report with no intention of taking any action on the Banerjee panel's recommendation until the matter is finally disposed of by this court.

On the other hand, the state government counsel Advocate general Kamal Trivedi and the orginal petitioner Neelkant Bhatia's counsels S V Vakil and Y F Mehta contended that since the High Court had last year declared the Banerjee report as illegal and had called in question the need for setting up this panel to probe the Godhra train carnage when Justice Nanavati commission and Shah panel had already been seized of the matter. Therefore, there was no need for the Centre or Ministry of Railways to place the report in Parliament, they said.

UNI