In a latest development, the Bombay High Court (HC) has asked the Maharashtra government to prove its decision, to ban unvaccinated people from travelling in local trains, was in larger public interest and hence, must not be interfered with.
This development came after the Maharashtra government’s counsel Anil Anturkar on Tuesday, February 8, informed HC that minutes or records of the meeting of the state executive committee held last year under the Disaster Management (DM) Act have not been maintained. It said that however, the SOPs issued in that regard “were not unfair to the public at large and the decision was taken “without malafide.”
A bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice M S Karnik has been hearing pleas filed by activists Feroze Mithiborwala and Yohan Tengra, through advocates Tanveer Nizam and Nilesh Ojha, respectively, which challenged the state’s SOPs, by seeking that all people in Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) be allowed to travel by local trains, irrespective of their vaccination status.
In the previous hearing, the HC had asked the state to submit such minutes of meeting to show that its decision was reasonable and based on expert advice. The bench, however, asked the state government to submit something basic to show that a meeting had been held and the issue had been discussed with reason.
Therefore, Anturkar submitted that the record or minutes of the meeting in which the impugned decision taken was not available due to administrative difficulties. However, the decision was taken as the Constitution permits reasonable restrictions in the “interest of general public” and same was not unfair.
He also stated that merely because the minutes of the meeting were not taken, the entire decision cannot be vitiated.
Meanwhile, the Union government’s counsel Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Anil Singh told the HC that the Centre didn’t have any policy that discriminated between unvaccinated and vaccinated people.
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