Hon’ble Amitava Lala, ACJ.—Since an application has been filed by the petitioner to delete the name of respondent No. 9, the application is treated to be allowed without imposing any cost. Leave is granted to the counsel for the petitioner to delete the name of respondent No. 9 from the array of the parties by red ink.

2. This writ petition, in the form of Public Interest Litigation, has been filed by the petitioner, claiming himself to be businessman of the consumer goods, out of his great affection to the old religious ponds situated at religious places in the city of District, Varanasi, which are sought to be filled up in order to raise construction in the nature of residential and/or commercial causing great ecological imbalances. The prayer in the writ petition is as follows :

“(i) issue a writ order or direction in the nature of mandamus restraining the respondent Nos. 3 to 5 from releasing the sanctioned map of multistoried complex sought to be developed and raised by respondent Nos. 8 to 11 situate over Pond and its bank situate over Arazi Nos. 82 and 81, village Birdopur Weard Bhelupur Pargana Dehat Amanat, District, Varanasi respectively.

(ii) Issue a writ order or direction in the nature of mandamus restraining the respondent Nos. 6 and 7 from releasing the No Objection Certificate in favour of respondent Nos. 8 to 11 for proposed construction over Pond and its bank situate over Arazi Nos. 82 and 81, Village Birdopur Ward Bhelupur Pargana Dehat Amanat, District, Varanasi respectively.

(iii) Issue a writ order or direction the nature of mandamus restraining the respondent Nos. 8 to 11 from raising construction in the shape of Multistoried Complex over Arazi Nos. 82 and 81, village Birdopur Ward Bhelupur Pargana Dehat Amanat, District, Varanasi, respectively.

(iv) issue any other writ, order or direction which this Hon’ble Court may deem fit and proper in the facts and circumstances of the case.

(v) to award the cost of the present writ petition.”

3. On exchange of affidavits and upon hearing the parties’ counsel at length, we come across factual and legal aspects to decide the case hereunder.

4. According to us, the latest pronouncement of the Supreme Court is that credential of the writ petitioner is to be decided. In State of Uttaranchal v. Balwant Singh Chaufal and others, JT 2010 (1) SC 329 for discarding frivolous Public Interest Litigations several points are formulated in order to preserve the purity and sanctity of the Public Interest Litigation. One of such conditions is that the Courts should prima facie verify the credentials of the petitioner before entertaining a Public Interest Litigation.

5. We fail to understand as to what type of interest the petitioner could have, who is doing the business of consumer goods, in respect of affection to the old religious ponds situated in religious places of city and District Varanasi. However, even assuming that he can file Public Interest Litigation being a citizen of India, the other aspects are to be seen in support of the contention.

6. We find that the petitioner has annexed certain documents in the name of Advocate Sanjay Srivastava. The correspondence of all documents in between Sri Sanjay Srivastava and the authorities are annexed with the petition. On inquiry, we have not received material answer as to how the petitioner has got such documents to file this Public Interest Litigation from Sanjay Srivastava and as to whether this is proxy petition on behalf of interested Advocate or not. Apart from that, he has also annexed certain documents being the correspondence made between the authority and one Sri Chandra Shekhar Giri. These annexures are also made part and parcel of the rejoinder affidavit. On inquiry, we have not got a clear answer as to how these documents are being collected by the petitioner except that aforesaid persons are the residents of Varanasi.

7. Against this background, the question comes in the mind of the Court that if they are t