The Jharkhand High Court on December 27 gave a major relief to Chief Minister Hemant Soren in the illegal stone mining lease case. The division bench headed by the Chief Justice Sanjaya Kumar Mishra and Justice Ananda Sen dismissed the public interest litigation filed activist Sunil Mahto and said that the PIL is a repetition of an earlier one filed by petitioner Shiv Shankar Sharma.
In the PIL, Mr. Mahto had alleged that Mr. Soren misused his office and power to allocate mining leases to himself and his family members. He had also alleged Jharkhand CM having made disproportionate assets through unknown sources of income.
The case was heard during November 2023 in the Jharkhand High Court at which time the names of Chief Minister Hemant Soren, his wife Kalpana Soren, and sister-in-law Sarla Murmu were mentioned. The division bench of Chief Justice Sanjay Mishra and Justice Anand Sen had reserved the decision after hearing the arguments of both the sides.
In the last hearing, Advocate General Rajeev Ranjan and Advocate Piyush Chitresh had presented the case on behalf of the government. Mr. Chitresh had informed the court that an earlier petition, filed by Mr. Sharma, had been rejected in the Supreme Court. The lawyers argued that that there was nothing new in Mr. Mahto’s petition and that it should be also rejected.
Advocates Rajeev Kumar and Vishal Kumar had presented arguments on behalf of the petitioner stressing that this case was different from the one that was dismissed. The court was told that Mr. Soren holds the mines department portfolio so it was not possible to allocate land to his family members without his consent.
In the earlier PIL filed by Mr. Sharma, it was alleged that Mr. Soren allocated a mining lease for himself in Angara in Ranchi, and also to his wife and sister-in-law.
