Bombay HC fines petitioner Rs 5 lakh, orders FIR against him for extortion

Dombivli resident Sapan Shrivastava claimed that the ICSE and around 2,200 schools affiliated to the board were illegal as they were not approved by the human resources development (HRD) ministry.

Taking stern note of frivolous public interest litigations (PIL), the Bombay high court (HC) on Thursday imposed an exemplary cost of ₹5 lakh on a petitioner for filing a frivolous PIL, which claimed that thousands of schools affiliated to the Council for Indian School Certificate Examination (ICSE) were being run illegally. The judges also ordered an FIR be filed against the petitioner for threatening ICSE-affiliated schools to show their approvals.

Taking stern note of frivolous public interest litigations (PIL), the Bombay high court (HC) on Thursday imposed an exemplary cost of ₹5 lakh on a petitioner for filing a frivolous PIL, which claimed that thousands of schools affiliated to the Council for Indian School Certificate Examination (ICSE) were being run illegally. (HT Photo)

Dombivli resident Sapan Shrivastava claimed that the ICSE and around 2,200 schools affiliated to the board were illegal as they were not approved by the human resources development (HRD) ministry. The 40-year-old based his claim on a right to information (RTI) reply from the HRD ministry.

However, the division bench of chief justice Pradeep Nandrajog and justice Bharati Dangre noticed that the conclusion drawn by the petitioner was wrong as the HRD ministry had in its reply stated that education is in the concurrent list, meaning it is a subject on which both the Centre and the states can make laws. Thus, state governments also have the power to approve education boards. However, the bench said, the petitioner did not bother to verify from different state governments as to whether ICSE board was approved by any of them or not.

Senior advocate Raju Subramanian, who represented ICSE, pointed out that the board has been approved by several state governments, including Maharashtra. He said the petitioner had created his own page on a crowd-funding website, seeking funds by claiming that he was a reporter exposing corruption in the education sector.

The judges asked the petitioner to pay ₹5 lakh to ICSE board in four weeks and directed the high court registry to not entertain any petitions filed by him unless he showed proof of the payment. Irked that Shrivastava was misleading people by posting previous HC orders passed in his other PILs on the webpage, the HC directed the officials of the website to remove his webpage. The court also ordered the registration of an FIR against him for alleged extortion after Subramanian pointed out that Shrivastava had written letters to various ICSE board-affiliated schools threatening them to show their approvals or he would take criminal action against them.