Recently Delhi High Court has passed one of the orders asking the Associated Journals Ltd (AJL), who serve as the publisher of the National Herald Newspaper to vacate the space they had occupied in press enclave, ITO, New Delhi. However, this single judge order has been challenged but the plea was dismissed by the High Court. Advocate Sunil Fernandes who is representing the Associated Journal Limited has played a significant role in this arena.
The provisions of Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorized Occupants) Act, 1971, has been given greater importance and can be viewed in a different dimension if AJL would not vacate the premises situated at ITO, New Delhi. There is an important dimension which cannot be over looked as a 56 year old lease was ended by the center and proclaimed that no printing or publishing task would go on.
The single judge order had catered to the fact that Young Indian (YI) had taken over the authority or highjacked AJL , Where Mr. Rahul Gandhi (Congress Chef) and Sonia Gandhi are the prime shareholders of the same.
A major role has been played by the Centre and Land and Development Office (L&DO) who had mentioned that over the course of past ten years publication activities were not taking place and it was solely used for the purpose of commercialisation, which was denied by AJL in front of High Court.
The high court had proclaimed to the dimension that 99 percent shares of AJL were transferred to YI making the beneficial interest amount to Rs 413.40 crore.
The court had mentioned that "In fact, AJL has been hijacked by Young Indian Company, which brings the instant case within the purview of Clause III(13) of the Lease-Deed of 'the subject premises"
The L&DO's order had also said failure to hand over possession would lead to initiation of proceedings under the It was mentioned in L&DO’s orders that failure of vacating the possession would be separately dealt under the provisions of Public Premises Act.
For the sake of evidence AJL had gathered proof in the form of digital or electronic renditions of National Herald, Hindi's Navjivan and Urdu's Qaumi. 'National Herald’ which is a weekly newspaper was published at the ITO premises and had resumed last year on 24th September which was on a Sunday'.
Courtesy/By: Debasmita Goswami
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08 Jan 2019
