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HC reserves orders on Swamy petition

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI APRIL 24. The First Bench of the Madras High Court today reserved orders on a petition from the Janata Party president, Subramanian Swamy, seeking to disqualify the AIADMK MP, T.T.V. Dinakaran, on the ground that he was a permanent resident of Singapore.

Dr. Swamy told the bench comprising the Chief Justice, B. Subhashan Reddy, and Justice F.M. Ibrahim Kalifulla, on Tuesday that the MP had paid $ 1 million to obtain the PR status.

The senior counsel, B. Kumar, today submitted that the PR status was a qualification, which would merely dispense with the necessity for one applying for visa for visiting Singapore every time. The PR status would in no way have any bearing on citizenship of a person. A person aspiring for PR should be a director of a company, which had invested at least $ 1 million in Singapore, he noted. In the instant case, Mr. Dinakaran was merely sponsored by a company, of which he was one of the directors.

Merely saying Mr. Dinakaran possessed the PR status and hence was not entitled to figure in the voter list was not enough; the petitioner should explain the rights and liabilities of the status and prove that it was inconsistent with his citizenship here, Mr. Kumar submitted.

Replying to queries from Mr. Justice Reddy, the senior counsel said Mr. Dinakaran's passport had remained impounded and he had not travelled to any country, even for a day, between 1999 and 2003. Moreover, the Representation of the People Act envisaged its own machinery to redress claims and grievances over inclusion and exclusion of a voter.

Replying to the arguments, Dr. Swamy said that while dismissing an election petition against Mr. Dinakaran the High Court confined itself to poll issues and said other aspects could not be dealt with in an election petition. Even the returning officer, who rejected Dr. Swamy's objection to the candidature of Mr. Dinakaran, said that since the MP's name figured in the voter list he would not go into the merit of Dr. Swamy's arguments.

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