Patna High Court Dismisses PIL Seeking Interference Of Court To Build Airports Across Bihar

Hon’ble Division Bench comprising Hon’ble Mr. Justice K. Vinod Chandran, CJ and Hon’ble Mr. Justice Madhuresh Prasad of Hon’ble Patna High Court recently disposed of the bunch of PILs seeking the interference of Hon’ble High Court  to direct the respondents to start/resume the functioning of Airports/Airstrips across Bihar with a direction that “We cannot be monitoring or supervising the discussions between the Government in so far as the establishment of airports; which is beyond the judicial ken.”

BRIEF FACTS OF THE CASE

Public Interest Litigation seeking establishment of airports in almost as much as the districts that exist in the State of Bihar

HON’BLE COURT’S OBSERVATIONS

At the outset, Hon’ble Court made serious remarks and observed that :-

“In our opinion, the writ petitions would not be maintainable, especially as a Public Interest Litigation, since it is a purely policy matter of the respective Governments to decide on the establishment of airports, the land to be acquired and so on and so forth; wherein financial viability also becomes a very important consideration. The very claim raised in all the 31 writ petitions is to have an airport in every district of Bihar. We cannot but say, it shocks the judicial mind, especially considering the jurisdictional power to interfere in such policy matters.”

Hearing this, the learned counsel has shown the order passed by Division Bench before the court on the same issue, to which Hon’ble Court has observed that “We have to specifically notice that the Division Bench noticed the constraints of invoking the extraordinary remedy under Article 226; but proceeded so to do only with respect to the Purnea Airport and the proper maintenance and upkeep of the non-functional airports as also keeping them free of encroachments.”

Case Title:-  Nikhil Singh Vs. Union of India and other connected writ petitions

Case no. :- Civil Writ Jurisdiction Case No.1784 of 2023

Order date :- 11.05.2023