A Dehradun resident who has filed a petition in the Uttarakhand High Court seeking a CBI probe into how Uttar Pradesh MLA Aman Mani Tripathi and 10 of his acquaintances were able to travel upto Karnprayag on their way to Badrinath with an official pass during the lockdown earlier this month has been directed by the court to make the officials concerned party in the case.

 Hearing the petition through video conferencing, the division bench of chief justice Ramesh Ranganathan and justice RC Khulbe has set the matter for hearing next after one week.

It will be recalled that Tripathi and 10 others had travelled by road from UP to purportedly conduct rituals for the UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s recently deceased father in Badrinath even before the portals of the shrine were reopened for the summer.

Dehradun resident Alok Ghildiyal had filed a public interest litigation in the high court seeking a probe by the Central  Bureau of Investigation into the whole matter. The state government counsel stated that the petition was worth quashing as cases had been lodged against the MLA and his friends in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.

Considering this, the matter does not merit a probe by the CBI, the Government representative said.

On the basis of a letter written by a senior bureaucrat, the Dehradun district administration had issued a pass to Tripathi and his friends to travel to Badrinath. The pass had been issued for the period from May 2 to 7. After hearing the matter, the division bench directed the petitioner to make the officials concerned party in the case.

It will be recalled that controversial UP MLA Aman Mani Tripathi along with ten of his supporters had crossed boundaries of various  districts of Uttarakhand on the basis of a letter issued by the additional chief secretary of Uttarakhand, Om Prakash and a pass issued by the Dehradun district administration during the lockdown in the first week of May.

 After crossing various districts, he was stopped at Karnprayag in Chamoli district where he was engaged in a heated argument with the team of the local administration on May 3. The Chamoli administration stood its ground and asked him to return. On the same night, the MLA and his supporters were booked under section 188 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Epidemic Diseases Act.