JOIN USUpalokayukta case: NGO files impleading application in HC
The contradictory versions of Legislative Assembly proceedings of November 27, 2015, pertaining to the motion seeking removal of Justice Subhash B Adi as Upalokayukta, has taken a new turn with an NGO filing an impleading application in the High Court, stating that it had downloaded the proceeding which originally said the ‘motion is admitted.’
The State in contrast, had submitted before the court the copy of the proceeding which stated, ‘In respect of the motion/proposal, I shall take the necessary steps in accordance with the provisions of the Lokayukta Act’.
The impleading application has been filed by Janaadhikaara Sangharsha Parishath (JSP), represented by its co-president Adarsh R Iyer, on February 23, 2016. The application stated that Iyer had downloaded the copy of the proceeding from -
http://www.kla.kar.nic.in – which hosts the transcripts of the proceedings. The petitioner claims to have accessed the website between December 7 and 11 of 2015 and downloaded the proceedings and contended that it was fabricated much later, after December 11, 2015.
“The bench hearing the writ petition, filed by Justice Subhash B Adi, had observed that the specific disagreement between the two versions was a matter of grave concern. The critical question before the court is which one of two different transcripts of the same proceeding represents the truth and which one is tampered with. I discussed the issue with senior advocate K V Dhananjay and since I had downloaded the copy of the proceeding prior to the filing of the writ petition, I decided to file an impleading application,” Adarsh Iyer said, adding that he had saved the downloaded copy of the proceeding, that came with the name ‘debates27112015.pdf’, in his home computer. The petitioner has also filed the copy of the internet subscriber bill issued by the Internet Service Provider (ISP) for four months.
In the last hearing, the court had directed the Secretary, Karnataka Legislative Assembly, to submit a certificate from the server which would show the hash numbers of the document of the transcript which was uploaded on November 27, 2015. The court further stated that “In case the hash numbers have been changed, it would conclusively prove that the first document uploaded on November 27 was tampered with as reflected by the changed hash number. The secretariat has sought time to get the certificate from the National Informatics Centre (NIC).