Supreme Court refuses urgent hearing on PIL

New Delhi, March 12: The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to accord urgent hearing on a petition seeking postponement of the Indian Premier League-2020 amid the coronavirus scare.

A vacation bench of justices U. U. Lalit and Aniruddha Bose told the petitioner that he could mention the matter for urgent listing before the regular bench on March 16, when the apex court will re-open after the Holi break.

“This is not a matter which cannot await till re-opening of the court. You can mention it before the regular court on March 16,” the bench told advocate Mohan Babu Agarwal, who has filed the petition.

Agarwal told the bench that the Indian Premier League (IPL)-2020 is scheduled to start from March 29 and would continue for almost two months, but no safety measures have been declared to prevent the spread of coronavirus during the matches, which are likely to witness over 40,000 spectators in each match.

“We are sitting in a vacation bench. We will hear those matters which cannot wait. All IPL matches will not start on March 29. You can mention it on March 16,” the bench said.

The number of coronavirus patients in India has risen to 73 with 13 fresh cases, the Union health ministry said on Thursday.

Agarwal told the apex court that during the IPL, players, commentators and broadcasters from foreign countries which are hit by coronavirus would come to India and there is a possibility of spread of the virus during large gatherings in such matches.

“This IPL is just a domestic professional tournament with no contribution to ICC records and is a private tournament and the risk in the times of Covid-19 (coronavirus) is quite high due to huge crowd gathering including players, staff, cheerleaders etc,” the plea said.

“They (BCCI and other concerned authorities) should explain how they are going to deal with the recent threat of Covid-19 and is it not the right time to either postpone or defer the same to future date as the threat is apparent in all probabilities looking into the present scenario,” it said.

The plea has also sought a direction to “either stop, postpone or defer for future dates all such huge programs like IPL etc, avoiding large public gathering for the time being till it (coronavirus) is being controlled”. —