CWP No. 2510 of 2008 [1] IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB & HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH CWP No. 2510 of 2008 Date of Decision: 11.09.2008 Ram Kumar Singla ..Petitioner versus Union of India ..Respondent CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE T.S.THAKUR,CHIEF JUSTICE HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE SURYA KANT Present : Mr. Ravi Sharma and Mr. Sunil Bhardwaj, Advocates for the petitioner Mr. O.S.Batalvi, Advocate for the respondent. ***** T.S.Thakur, Chief Justice (Oral) This petition purports to have been filed in public interest. It prays for a mandamus directing the respondent-Union of India to restrain its Ministries, Departments and Authorities from showing disrespect to the national leaders in the advertisements issued by them. The immediate provocation for filing the petition appears to have come from three different advertisements, two of which appeared in 'The Tribune' in its issues dated 14.11.2007and 30.1.2008, while the third appeared in ' The Daily Hindu' 'Delhi Edition' issued on 4.2.2008. Yet another advertisement published by Ministry of State Women & Child Development in 'The Tribune' dated 14.8.2008 has been placed on record as Annexure P-4 alongwith an application filed by the petitioner. The petitioner's case appears to be that in all these advertisements, the photographs of the national leaders like Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, CWP No. 2510 of 2008 [2] Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Rajinder Parshad, Sarojini Naidu and Rani Jhansi have been shown below the photographs of other national and local leaders, which according to the petitioner tentamounts to showing disrespect to the national leaders of great eminence. Mr. Ravi Sharma, learned counsel appearing for the petitioner argued that the manner in which the photographs of the national leaders have appeared in the advertisements and the space allotted to them is not befitting the stature of the national leaders and shows the leaders in bad light creating an impression as though the national and local leaders currently incharge of the affairs of the country are more respected then the leaders of the era gone by. Such advertisements should, argued by Mr. Sharma, be forbidden by this Court by issuing a mandamus to the respondent-Union of India, for otherwise the process of showing disrespect to leaders who are held in high esteem by our countrymen would continue unabated. There is, in our opinion, no merit whatsoever in the contentions urged before us by Mr. Sharma. The argument that publishing photographs of national leaders in different advertisements will amount to showing disrespect to them simply because of the placement of the photographs in the same has not impressed us. We have carefully seen the advertisements enclosed with the writ petition and the application filed by the petitioner. There is, in our opinion, no reason to infer any intended or even unintended disrespect to any national leader whether of the modern age or of the age that has gone by. On the contrary, the photographs published in the advertisements give a prominent place to the leaders of freedom struggle and even quote the message which they have given to the country. The CWP No. 2510 of 2008 [3] petitioner appears to be reading too much into the advertisements and has rushed to this Court for no valid reasons. This petition in our considered opinion is a clear abuse of the process of this Court hence, deserves to be dismissed with costs. We accordingly dismissed the writ petition with costs assessed as Rs. 5000/- with the direction that the costs shall be deposited in the Punjab & Haryana High Court Advocates Welfare Funds, within two weeks, failing which the Registry shall put up the matter separately for taking appropriate action against the petitioner for disobedience of the order. (T.S.THAKUR) CHIEF JUSTICE (SURYA KANT) 11.09.2008 JUDGE 'ravinder'