Actor Juhi Chawla moved the Delhi High Court challenging a previous decision that had dismissed her civil suit against 5G rollout in India. However, the court noted that the order was six months old and as there were several other cases pending, listed her plea for hearing on January 25.
A bench headed by Justice Vipin Sanghi said, “Order is of June. You come now. Six months have gone.”
The case was initially listed for hearing in February. But at the urging of senior counsel Salman Khurshid, appearing for Chawla, who said that the present case was an “unfortunate” one, the court advanced the date of hearing to January 25.
On May 31 this year, Chawla moved the Delhi High Court against the proposal to set up a 5G network in the country. She had filed a 5,000-page lawsuit with 33 parties listed as defendants, including the Science and Engineering Research Board; Ministry of Communications; Ministry of Electronics and Information; Ministry of Science and Technology; Ministry of Health and Family Welfare; Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change; Indian Council of Medical Research; some universities; and the World Health Organization.
Earlier, Chawla’s petition was dismissed by the court which termed her plea “defective and done for media publicity.” The court had also stated that the actor, and the other plaintiffs, abused the process of law and imposed costs of Rs 20 lakh, including unpaid court fees, on them.
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Chawla and the plaintiffs had then sought a refund of court fees and a waiver of costs, which “shocked” the court. “This is the most frivolous application I’ve seen in my life,” Justice Midha told Chawla’s counsel on July 7, adding, “We were inclined to issue contempt notice, but didn’t.”
The judge was hearing three applications in connection to the case, for refund of court fees, waiver of costs, and replacing the word ‘dismissed’ in the judgement with ‘rejected’.
Following this, on July 29, Chawla withdrew her plea seeking for her lawsuit against the 5G rollout to be declared ‘rejected’ instead of ‘dismissed’. Justice Jayant Nath allowed the withdrawal of the plea.