The hearing in the case of NCCT delink from NCUI which came up for consideration on Wednesday in the Delhi High Court remained inconclusive with the next date given in July. The two sides put their respective arguments but the Honourable Judge wanted to hear the matter after a couple of months.
NCCT has filed an affidavit at the direction of the court a day earlier on Tuesday arguing how delinking was justified. NCUI advocates led by Om Prakash argued against the points contained in the NCCT affidavit but the Hon Court directed him to file a counter affidavit along with oral submissions.
“We were fully ready to answer each and every point then and there as the NCCT case hinges on weak grounds but we have to abide by the direction of the court”, said an NCUI official commenting on the hearing on Wednesday.
Earlier, in April in a major victory for the apex body NCUI, Delhi High Court had asked the Union of India to restrain itself from taking any steps to make structural changes in the organization.
The High Court also observed that prime facie it appears that the respondents (Union Govt) have no authority to delink a part (NCCT) of the petitioners’(NCUI’s) organization as a separate society.
The court had asked the Union of India to put before it the provisions of law, under which the impugned orders have been passed. The Union Govt filed an affidavit to this effect on Wednesday.
While a battery of lawyers including Harish Malhotra, Senior Advocate, Mr Om Prakash and others represented NCUI’s points of argument in the High Court, the respondents- the Union of India & ANR were represented through Arun Bhardwaj, CGSC with Nikhil Bhardwaj and others.
It bears recall that NCUI had received a letter from the Agriculture Ministry with the title “Establishing National Council of Cooperative Training (NCCT) as an independent, Central and Professional entity-delinking from National Cooperative Union of India”.
The apex body went to court challenging the order of the Ministry.