Bombay High Court temporarily suspends externment of Uddhav Sena leader​on December 30, 2024 at 11:59 pm

Bombay High Court temporarily suspends externment of Uddhav Sena leader

​Bombay High Court temporarily suspends externment of Uddhav Sena leader Bombay High Court temporarily suspends externment of Uddhav Sena leader   

The Bombay High Court on Monday directed that a notice issued to Shiv Sena (UBT) Pimpri Chinchwad city president Sachin Bhosale in pursuance of externment proceedings going on against him, to be temporarily suspended and the authority to decide the issue within a week.

The bench of Justices Dr Neela Gokhale and Ashwin Bhobe were hearing a petition filed by Sachin Bhosale, the Uddhav Sena leader, who is also a former Corporator and a practising lawyer. His plea stated that the externment proceedings have been initiated due to political reasons and to keep him away from the upcoming local body elections that are going to be held in the next few months.

Externment proceedings are initiated against a person with a criminal background when he or she is considered a threat to public peace and is likely to commit criminal activities in a particular area. The person is then directed to leave that area for a certain duration of time.

This is the second round of litigation for Bhosale over the issue as he received a notice on October 21, seeking his response to the initiation of the externment proceedings just before the Maharashtra Assembly election.

Advocate Uday Warunjikar, appearing for Bhosale, submitted that the Sena leader had been given three days to respond to that notice which he had received only on October 30, a few days before the Maharashtra polls.

The Maharashtra Assembly elections were held in a single-phase on November 20.

The High Court at that time had extended the duration for Bhosale to reply to the notice and Warunjikar submitted that his client had already replied to it.

On Monday, Bhosale’s counsel pointed out that without an order being passed by the authorities in its October 21 notice, a second notice was issued on December 4, for the same externment proceeding. This time, seven days’ time was given, but it was again received only on December 19 by Bhosale.

When the bench checked this with the state’s counsel, Additional Public Prosecutor Ashish Satpute submitted that the notice dated October 21, 2024 will be decided by next Monday, after considering the reply submitted to that notice by the petitioner.

“The notice dated December 4, 2024 impugned herein shall remain in abeyance for a period of eight days after the decision of the previous notice dated October 21, 2024 is taken”, the bench noted.

Bhosale has about seven cases against him, while he claims that one is related to a family dispute which dates back to 2009. The remaining six cases, he claims, are political in nature because of some of the other protests that he had undertaken against the government.