A petition was filed on Monday in the Supreme Court seeking the imposition of President’s Rule in Uttar Pradesh. The imposition of Article 356 of the Constitution is necessary to save the democracy and the lives of 20 crore people, the plea said.
The plea has been filed in the backdrop of various incidents that took place in Uttar Pradesh over the period of one year. The petitioner, C.R. Jaya Sukin, has submitted that injustice has been caused to the entire state and its people, and their basic amenities have been affected by the non-appreciation of relevant materials in an objective and impartial manner by the state.
The petitioner has also alleged that Uttar Pradesh’s ways of proceeding and working are illegal, arbitrary, high-handed, whimsical and unfair, amount to the abuse of authority and are against the principles of ‘natural justice’.
The petitioner further submitted that the illegal movements of Uttar Pradesh will amount to discrimination and that such discrimination will amount to the arbitrary and unreasonable exercise of power and the same “shall not be in conformity with Articles 14, 16 and 21 of the Constitution of India”.
According to the National Crime Record Bureau’s “Crime in India” 2019 report, Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest number of crimes against women. India had reported 4,05,861 cases in 2019 and, out of these, Uttar Pradesh had 59,853 such incidents, the plea stated.
The plea also added that, according to the NCRB’s Prison Statistics India report, in Uttar Pradesh, there were persons awaiting trial who accounted for more than two-thirds of the prison population. The law requires the detention of juveniles in rehabilitative facilities, although, at times, authorities detained them in adult prisons, especially in rural areas and often held pretrial detainees along with convicted prisoners, the plea said.
The petitioner further said that mob lynching in Uttar Pradesh happens very often and the police have not been taking action against criminals.