2007 Gorakhpur riots: UP Govt. denies permission for CM Yogi Adityanath's trial

New Delhi:  The Uttar Pradesh Government on Thursday denied permission to the Allahabad High Court for the trial of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in the 2007 Gorakhpur riots matter. The Allahabad High Court has exempted Adityanath from personal appearance and has also allowed to ratify the writ petition. Uttar Pradesh Advocate General Raghvendra Singh told the Allahabad High Court that the principal secretary had denied permission to try the Chief Minister. The next hearing on the matter will take place on July 7. Earlier, the High Court had summoned the principal secretary and had directed him to bring all documents related to the case. The court had asked the principal secretary to appear in person on May 11 and produce all documents including the sanction given by the state government to prosecute the accused. He was also asked to file an affidavit. The order was passed on a petition filed by Parvez Parwaz in 2008 at Cantonment police station, in which the then local MP and Adityanath was named as an accused for inciting communal violence. In another big development related with the Uttar Pradesh government the ruling Bharatiya Janta Party on Thursday expelled 87 party leaders and workers for “anti-party activities”. The duration of the expulsion would be six years. Uttar Pradesh unit of Bharatiya Janta Party’s disciplinary committee initiated an investigation on all the leaders and once the results were out, this extreme step was taken. State General Secretary Vidya Sagar Sonkar said “the action was taken following a probe by the disciplinary committee of the state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party”. As per the reports, the expelled leaders and workers had either contested against the BJP candidates in assembly elections or backed the opposition, he added. The expulsion was cleared by state President Keshav Prasad Maurya. Prominent among those sacked are Kapil Dev Kori (Rampur), V.K. Saini (Moradabad), Inderdev Singh (Bijnore), Shanti Swaroop Sharma (Bulandshahr), Chandra Shekhar Rawat (Hathras), Ashish Vashishtha (Baghpat) and Pratibha Singh, Mahesh Narayan Tiwari, Nirmal Srivastava, Vaibhav Pandey and Vidyabhushan Dwivedi from Gonda. (With inputs from ANI)