Relief to CM, as HC dismisses Uke’s two applications against him

Nagpur: Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court on Thursday dismissed both the applications filed by lawyer Satish Uke against Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis.
In his first application, the petitioner had prayed for keeping Fadnavis away from MLA and CM’s post till decision of his review application filed earlier with the HC. In second, he demanded directives to the HC registry to register his review application filed in Election Petition (No.1/2014).
“The review application filed in the present proceedings is not yet registered and the matter is already concluded by the decision of this court on August 19, which is in operation.It’s, therefore, not possible to entertain this application,” justice Ravi Deshpande said before dismissing Uke’s second application. He also rejected petitioner’s demand to file an appeal before the Supreme Court.
In his application, Uke stated that criminal application No.3/2016 was decided by the HC’s division bench on February 6. After taking into consideration the arguments advanced, HC ruled that it would be appropriate to defer the hearing of this application till the decision of review petition. He was granted liberty to circulate this application immediately after the orders passed in review petition.
“Review Petition (Cri.) No.445/2017 is still pending before the apex court. Therefore, it is not possible for this court to go behind the orders passed by the HC’s division bench. This application is, therefore, dismissed with liberty to the applicant to move it as and when review petition is decided,” the judge said.
It was justice Deshpande who had first registered a suo motu contempt against controversial lawyer after finding that he was indulging in filing fake, frivolous and vexatious cases with allegations to scandalize the court and its officers.
On February 27 and 28, 2017, he became first lawyer in state to be convicted by HC for contempt and was sentenced to two months of simple imprisonment and was slapped with a fine of Rs2 lakh. He was later released after he tendered an unconditional apology to the HC.