Read Time: 04 minutes

Synopsis

A Bench of Justice Hemant Gupta, and Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia, while upholding the validity, dismissed petitions challenging the constitutionality of the Haryana Sikh Gurudwara (Management) Act 2014. 

Earlier, a Bench of Justice Hemant Gupta and Justice V Ramasubramaniam, decided to hear the petition filed by Harbhajan Singh, member of Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee(SGPC) in 2014. The Bench had rejected the preliminary objections raised by the State of Haryana in a writ petition challenging the constitutional validity of the Haryana Sikh Gurudwara (Management) Act 2014.

Senior Advocate Shyam Divan, had appeared for the the State of Haryana, who challenged the maintainability of the petition on two grounds - (i) that there was no infringement of fundamental rights enabling the petitioners to invoke Article 32 of the Constitution of India; and (ii) that by arraying the States of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh as parties to the writ petitions, the writ petitioners are virtually inviting other States to comment upon the legislative competency of the State of Haryana, which is actually an abuse of the process of law. 

Many cases were referred by the State, but all were objected to by the Bench, for not being applicable in the pertinent matter at hand. 

In the concluding statements, the Bench opined, "In view thereof, we find that the objection about maintainability of the writ petitions is not sustainable. The same is declined. Hence, both the writ petitions under Article 32 for the alleged violation of their fundamental rights are required to be considered on merits". 

AOR Siddharth Batra appeared for Haryana Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, assisted by Advocates Archna Yadav, Chinmay Dubey, Shivani Chawla, Sakshi Shukla, Rhythm and Pratyush Arora.

 

CASE TITLE: Harbhajan Singh vs. State of Haryana