Associated Journals Ltd (AJL), publisher of the National Herald newspaper, will challenge in the Supreme Court this week’s Delhi high court order asking it to vacate its Herald House premises in New Delhi, Congress party spokesman and lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi said on Saturday.
A division bench of Delhi high court chief justice Rajendra Menon and justice V Kameswar Rao on Thursday rejected an earlier plea by AJL and ordered that the publisher vacate the building, a prime property on the Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg near Delhi’s Income Tax Office.
“We will definitely challenge the order at the Supreme Court,” Singhvi said.
AJL had challenged a December 21 order by a single-judge bench that dismissed its plea against the urban development ministry, which on October 30, 2018, had said that AJL’s 56-year-old lease on Herald House had ended and it must vacate the building.
The Centre had requested the court to dismiss the appeal, saying Young Indian, a company in which Congress President Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi are shareholders, had been formed with an intention to take over Herald House.