Supreme Court admits ISKCON Bangalore’s Special Leave Petition

The Apex court of India on 25th of September accepted the Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by ISKCON Bangalore and granted leave, after hearing its preliminary merits in spite of opposition by ISKCON Mumbai which repeatedly sought the court to reject ISKCON Bangalore’s Special leave petition. This signals the crossing of a major legal hurdle for ISKCON Bangalore in the tussle with self-styled guru camp of ISKCON Mumbai which began the day they entered the portals of the Supreme Court in Mid-2011.

To see order, please click on the following link:http://courtnic.nic.in/supremecourt/temp/sc %201581411p.txt For those not familiar with the Supreme Court procedures please read below.

What is this granting leave?

The Supreme Court of India does not accept appeal directly, wherein they are bound to hear any petition against High Court orders like lower courts below them do. In India suit begins at munsiff court, which can then be appealed in the district court, which further can be appealed in the High court. After which one can go to the Supreme Court. Only for Constitutional matters like fundamental rights etc. one can go directly to the Supreme Court.

One normally starts litigation based on the jurisdiction. ISKCON Bangalore filed the suit seeking an injunction against self-styled gurus controlled ISKCON Mumbai to not interfere with matters pertaining to the temple on Hare Krishna Hill on Chord Road. This suit was filed in City Civil Court also referred to as the Trail Court. The trial started in the district court as this related to the city. In Bangalore there are rural munsiff courts also but the temple being located in an urban area it came under jurisdiction of the civil court. Suit was filed in 2001.

Many interim orders were passed by various courts before the final trial court verdict came about in 2009. Initially the High court gave an interim order in favor of ISKCON Bangalore which

was later again endorsed by the Supreme Court in 2004 with some riders. The Trial Court later in 2009 gave permanent injunction in favor of ISKCON Bangalore. ISKCON’s self-made gurus filed an appeal against the trial courts verdict in the High Court. The Honorable High Court ruled in favor of ISKCON Mumbai. Against this ISKCON Bangalore went on an appeal to the apex court of the country, the Supreme Court of India.

In the Supreme Court, you can only enter with a Special Leave Petition (SLP) seeking permission to file an appeal, one however cannot file directly an appeal. SLP is the petition seeking leave or permission to file the appeal. On grant of leave of such a petition only will one’s appeal be heard entirely.

SLPs are heard on Mondays and Fridays. Each court will have about 250 matters on that day.

There are 13 courts in the Supreme Court. Two judges preside over these courts. In Supreme Court single judges don’t preside over the court. On Mondays and Fridays they will either say ‘issue notice’ to other side or will refuse to issue notice to other side. If they issue notice, then SLP will move to the next stage of hearing. The petition will be posted for a subsequent date for hearing; it will fall into the queue. If they refuse to issue notice it means that your case was dismissed in the very first step of the Supreme Court. Generally on that day of hearing of the SLP you get only two minutes before the judge. That is the first critical point for any litigant who enters the Supreme Court. Mostly the judges would have read two three para ‘synopsis’ in advance in their Chambers and come. Many cases not even take two minutes. They would have read about the pros and cons of the petition and decide to dismiss an SLP sometime in less than a minute. Sometimes due to their experience they won’t even allow the lawyer to speak.

They will say, we have read it, we do not find any merit in your pleas.

In 2011, ISKCON Bangalore crossed that stage and ISKCON Bangalore’s petition was not dismissed but notice was issued to ISKCON Mumbai representing the self-made gurus. They put their best foot forward. This is the most dangerous stage mainly because there are limitations on how much the lawyer can communicate and judges can understand in two minutes. Once rejected you simply have to go home even if you had so much merit in their case. Eighty five out of 100 SLPs that are filed before the Supreme Court are dismissed at this first stage.

Any judge, who reads the High Court judgment related to ISKCON Bangalore vs ISKCON Mumbai case, will get shocked that there is a finding given of such a huge number of documents being fraudulently fabricated. The Supreme Court judges will not have to see the documents at this stage to verify if it is true or not and they won’t think of verifying also. By default they will think it is true. If you tell a very big lie people don’t verify. We tend to think ‘how can such a big thing be a lie’. The High Court judgment is of that nature. Out of 250 documents submitted by ISKCON Bangalore, the High Court has given a finding that 106 documents are tampered and manipulated by insertions and affixing of seal of Bangalore society! Actually on examination of these 106 documents, one will be able to verify that there isn’t any affixing of seals or insertion of any matter as stated by the High Court. With such a judgment with such a finding of fraud by the High Court, normally the party won’t cross this stage of ‘issue notice’. The irony is that even if the High Court has not sufficiently weighed the evidence and given a perverted verdict still one’s case would be dismissed. This was what normally should have happened to ISKCON Bangalore’s case, if one goes by generality of how things happen in the judiciary. But ISKCON Bangalore’s case was not thrown out by Lord Krishna’s mercy. Notice

was issued to ISKCON Mumbai representing the self-made gurus.

ISKCON’s self-made gurus opposed issue notice and sought to dismiss the SLP. By Prabhupada’s and Krishna’s mercy instead of two minutes the court took half an hour on that day in 2011. Not only ‘issue notice’ was ordered, but the court gave a two page status quo order allowing ISKCON Bangalore to continue in management since there was sufficient evidence to show agents of ISKCON’s self-made gurus were trying to forcefully enter the temple on strength of the High Court judgment. It is then that the Supreme Court gave a status quo order stating that ISKCON Bangalore society will continue to manage the property on Hare Krishna Hill. That was ISKCON Bangalore’s first victory in the Supreme Court. This was indeed a hard pill to swallow for ISKCON Mumbai and its self-made gurus. Infact one of the Judges of the divisional bench wanted to grant leave at that time itself but instead sought to give an interim order keeping Bangalore society at the helm so that an opportunity to resolve the internal fight could be explored by both parties peacefully could be made available. This wish of a settlement was also part of the two page order of the Supreme Court.

The peace proposal failed because of high handed nature of the self-appointed gurus of ISKCON despite repeated struggle for peace by ISKCON Bangalore devotees.

Once issue notice happens in a case the opposing party has to file counter and the petitioner will file a rejoinder to the counter and SLP is heard as to whether to grant leave to file an appeal against the High Court order or not on a listed date. It is during one such date of hearing ISKCON’s self-made gurus filed an application saying that since fraud is basis of High Court judgment they wanted to be jointly managing the property in the interim period. In this application ISKCON’s self-made gurus lied to the court, saying that funds from the temple are being diverted to real estate. ISKCON Bangalore vehemently opposed it but agreed to an alternative. The alternative was to have a committee headed by a retired Supreme Court Judge.

Thus an Oversight committee was appointed but with no change in management.

Even though the Oversight Committee was formed the management still vested with ISKCON Bangalore society. The Oversight Committee had Hon. Justice Raveendran, a retired judge of the Supreme Court and two members one Sri Stoka Krishna Dasa from ISKCON Bangalore’s side and other Sri Ananda Tirtha Dasa from ISKCON Mumbai’s side. That was in essence the second victory for ISKCON Bangalore. The vehement attempt of ISKCON self-made gurus to take control of only temple in ISKCON wherein Srila Prabhupada is accepted as the only diksha guru of ISKCON had failed.

After committee was formed the SLP was getting listed on several dates but never heard due to shortage of time. Two years passed by. Unlike Mondays and Fridays when there are generally 250 matters listed for each court, on other days only about 20 to 25 items are listed. The SLP related matters after issue of notice are filed on other days still the case took two years to come up due to the delay tactics of ISKCON Mumbai.

This is the stage after ‘issue notice’ where the court will decide to hear on preliminary merits to admit the case by granting leave (permission) on SLP to file the Civil Appeal (CA). The court will decide to grant leave and permit filing of SLP or not at this stage. If they see no merit in converting it into an appeal petition gets thrown out at that stage. That is again end of petition. If they see merit in hearing the appeal then only they will grant leave. When this is done automatically the court convert the SLP papers into a civil appeal CA with a new number and ask the registry to get the documents from the trial court. On 25th September ISKCON

Bangalore crossed this second stage where leave was granted which means after hearing a full day the Supreme Court saw merit in giving them leave or permission to convert the SLP into a CA. The court could have rejected the SLP by dismissing it. This was the danger lurking on all the hearing dates till now. The court could potentially say ‘we heard you, but we don’t see any merit in hearing in depth through a Civil Appeal therefore we are dismissing the SLP.’ Once leave is granted, every CA has to be heard in full and a detailed judgment will have to result in an order, if on the other hand SLP is disposed of then there will be merely orders without a judgment. Only CA will have a judgment and an operating order. This is the stage the ISKCON Bangalore has reached that stage after leave being granted. They have crossed two major hurdles. When notice was issued they crossed the first hurdle and when the leave was granted by the Supreme Court they crossed a major second hurdle. Court will now have to go into the full-fledged details of the merits of ISKCON Bangalore’s Civil Appeal against the High Court judgment. Generally such a hearing will come up for hearing in 4 to 5 years’ time after the leave is granted.

Why is the ISKCON Bangalore’s case listed within a short time when generally after granting leave matter gets listed four or five years later?

ISKCON Bangalore has filed an application of urgency before the court saying that their projects which are not even connected to litigation are affected due to oversight committee insisting on having jurisdiction to supervise over not only Hare Krishna Hill but over all properties of Bangalore society like the property located on Vasanthapura in South Bangalore where Krishna Lila Park is proposed to be built. This has happened as the Oversight Committee has interpreted so the ambiguous wordings in the order which created the interim Oversight Committee. In between this application for modifying the ambiguous order was heard and the court said it will be heard with main matter as it had no time. Hence, immediately after granting leave, due to this urgency application it is posted for immediate disposal in November instead of going into the queue to come after four years. As the matter has been part heard by this divisional bench it won’t be going from one bench to another and getting unnecessarily delayed due to the legal process. These two judges won’t sit together in November. Their roster will change. But on November 18th 2014 and for further dates they will sit together only to hear IB vs ISKCON Bogus gurus matter, the hearings will be likely to go on for ten to twelve sessions before any conclusive order can be passed. ISKCON Bangalore will have ample opportunity to show the perversity of the High Court judgment by showing each of the 106 documents from the original documents and proving the veracity of these documents to the apex court. In addition it can also prove that ISKCON’s self-made gurus fabricated an audit report of 1991 by forging the signature of ISKCON Bangalore’s then auditor.

The matter came to be heard immediately without waiting for another four years is the third major victory for ISKCON Bangalore against ISKCON Mumbai and its self-made gurus who wish to drag the case so that there is undue delay in ISKCON Bangalore society’s upcoming Krishna Lila theme park in Vasanthapura, in Bangalore.

Before rising of the court on 25th, it made a request to the counsel for both sides. Being august institutions, they expressed the opinion that the counsels for both the sides help the parties to come to some mutual settlement if possible. ISKCON Bangalore’s counsel said that they have tried everything. Then one of the judges asked ISKCON Mumbai’s counsel as to why don’t they try to accommodate ISKCON Bangalore under the big umbrella of ISKCON. The ISKCON

Mumbai’s counsel replied that in a month gap till next hearing he will speak to his clients on the same. Will ISKCON Mumbai representing the self-appointed gurus accept that the fact the Prabhupada is protecting the Bangalore yatra from falling into their hands and leave aside at least one temple within ISKCON to practice that Srila Prabhupada as its diksha guru and give it allow it to be part of the umbrella within ISKCON.

All we can do is pray to Prabhupada that good sense prevails.

Jai Srila Prabhupada!