Jabalpur: A Madhya Pradesh High Court judge recused himself from an illegal mining case, stating that a sitting BJP MLA tried to contact him for a discussion on the matter.
Justice Vishal Mishra revealed on Monday that he was withdrawing from the case as Sanjay Pathak, the MLA from Vijayraghavgarh Assembly constituency, had recently tried to call him to discuss the case, Bar and Bench reported.
“Mr Sanjay Pathak has made an attempt to call me to have discussion regarding this particular matter, therefore, I am not inclined to entertain this writ petition. Let the matter be placed before the Hon’ble Chief Justice for listing the matter before the appropriate Bench for consideration,” Justice Mishra stated.
A writ petition was filed in the high Court by Ashutosh Dixit, who alleged that large-scale illegal mining activity was taking place. He had earlier approached the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) in Bhopal, which failed to take action on his complaint, prompting him to seek judicial intervention.
Though the BJP legislator was not named as a respondent in the writ petition, he filed an application before the court seeking to intervene in the matter, and said that he should be heard too.