New Delhi, Nov 14.
The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a petition, seeking to declare Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s birthday as a national holiday, and criticised lawyers for bringing in anything to the top court to be decided and wasting the court’s time.
“Blue skies are nice. So, you will come here asking for blue skies,” a bench led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandarchud commented. “You are a member of the bar. You must stick to issues which can be taken up by the courts.”
Whether on not to declare a national holiday, is an issue which fell within the domain of the executive, he observed.
“This is an issue to be dealt with by the government. What will the Supreme Court do? You are a lawyer. You must take the jurisdiction of this court seriously.”
In any case, you can celebrate his life by working hard like he worked hard to get freedom for India, not having a national holiday, CJI Chandrachud remarked. “Why ask for a national holiday?”
“This is making a mockery of the PIL jurisdiction of this court.”
The lawyer had sought the court’s intervention to have Netaji’s birthday declared a national holiday. He said that so many days are celebrated as national holidays including Buddha Jayanti. Today, in fact is children’s day, he said.
Though the government of India officially only has around 17 gazetted holidays and 36 optional holidays, the figure works out to only 255 working days given that Sundays and second and fourth Saturdays are also holidays.
In Uttar Pradesh, the working days are still lesser. Last year, the state government introduced Dronacharya day and karva chauth as official holidays apart from sudden holidays called for the kanwar yatras and pollution etc.
The petition was filed by one K.K. Ramesh and was filed by advocate Narender Kumar Verma. He had also sought to memorials raised in Netaji’s honour in all state capitals.
