Nainital: The Uttarakhand high court on Wednesday dismissed a petition related to an alleged seed procurement scam which took place during the tenure of chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat as agriculture minister in 2010. The petition filed this month by Raghunath Singh Negi from Dehradun sought a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the scam.The division bench of acting chief justice Rajiv Sharma and justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari while dismissing the petition said, “We have verified the credentials of the petitioner. He had a political background. We are of the considered view that the petitioner lacks locus standi to file the present writ petition. This writ petition has been filed as a camouflage to reap political mileage.” The petitioner was a former member of the Bhartiya Janata Party.Citing that a report of the Tripathi Commission on the alleged scam is dated April 9, 2014, while the present writ petition was filed on September 11, 2018, the court stated that if the petitioner was keen to file the writ petition, he should have approached the court at the earliest.The petitioner had alleged that seeds used for organic farming as fertilizers were purchased after paying 60% more than the market rate. The PIL further alleged that as the state agriculture minister in 2010, Rawat had passed orders for purchase of 14,900 quintal of dhaincha (green manure) seeds when the requirement was only for 9,680 quintal.Tripathi Commission which was formed to probe the case gave a clean chit to the CM and then agriculture secretary Om Prakash last year.Incidentally, another petition on similar grounds was withdrawn last month by J P Dabral who had filed the PIL in 2015.

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