Piqued by a number of cases filed in connection with forthcoming elections to local bodies across the State, the Madras High Court Bench here has said that no one can be allowed to use the High Court as a platform to settle either personal or political scores in view of the ensuing elections.
A Division Bench of Justices S. Nagamuthu and M.V. Muralidaran made the observation while dismissing a public interest litigation petition seeking a direction to Pudukottai Municipality Commissioner to delete names of voters who were either dead and had migrated from the local body’s electoral list.
Opposing the plea, Special Government Pleader M. Govindan pointed out that the First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M.M. Sundresh had already dealt with the subject and passed a detailed judgement on a PIL petition filed by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) represented by its organisation secretary R.S. Bharathi.
In that judgement, delivered on March 9, the First Division Bench had said: “We want to make it clear that though the jurisdiction of the Court over the Election Commission exists for furtherance of election process, it is not the function of the Court to interfere with the working of the Election Commission, which is an independent body with best reputation to carry out the electoral process fairly.
“We have no doubt that every endeavour will be made by the Election Commission to uphold its own reputation and see to it that fair and transparent elections are held in Tamil Nadu. We are emphasizing here that we would not like to encourage repeated monitoring of the electoral process on aspects which are to be dealt with by the Election Commission unless some violation of any law is specifically pointed out to us.
“This is also a caution for other litigants, who may be contemplating filing of petitions, as we are told that the history is of large number of petitions being filed in this behalf to the extent that this Court has issued a notification that all matters relating to the election process should be listed only before the First Bench as in the past.”
After recording submissions made by the SGP and the observations made by the First Bench, the Division Bench led by Mr. Justice Nagamuthu said it could not grant any relief to the petitioner in view of the categorical stand taken by the Chief Justice. It, however, gave liberty to the petitioner to work out his remedy in any other manner known to law.
In its case, DMK had sought for a direction to appoint officials working in Central Government offices to act as Electoral Registration Officers and Booth Level Officers to assist the State government officials in preparation of final electoral rolls after weeding out duplicate entries and “purifying” the voters list.
