The Madras High Court on Monday dismissed writ petitions filed against nominations made by the Centre to the Puducherry Legislative Assembly without taking Chief Minister V. Narayanaswamy into confidence and obtaining his recommendations.
Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M. Sundar held that their nominations had been made validly and therefore the Speaker V. Vaithilingam was not right in refusing to accept those nominations.
The writ petition was filed with a plea to declare as unconstitutional and consequently quash a gazette notification published by the Centre on July 4, 2017, nominating Bharatiya Janata Party Puducherry unit chief V. Saminathan, its treasurer K.G. Shankar, and educationist S. Selva Ganapathy to the Assembly.
The judges dismissed two writ petitions,one filed by K. Lakshminarayanan and another by S. Dhanalakshmi, against the nominations.
One of the litigants had sought for an injunction restraining the Centre from in any manner nominating or filling up the three seats in the Assembly except with persons who had been selected by the Council of Ministers.
The other writ petition had been filed with a plea to declare as unconstitutional and consequently quash a gazette notification published by the Centre on July 4 nominating Bharatiya Janata Party Puducherry unit chief V. Saminathan, its treasurer K.G. Shankar, and educationist S. Selva Ganapathy to the Assembly.
Bedi welcomes judgement
Responding to the High Court ruling, Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi said the appointment of nominated MLAs would strengthen the democracy. "Strengthens democracy. Improves the debate. Increases governance accountability, also increases ground work for people through three more MLAs, "Ms. Bedi said.
‘Will appeal in SC’
Chief Minister V Narayanasamy said the government would respond after studying the judgement. Petitioners are free to appeal against the HC order. “Petitioners are free to appeal against the HC order”, he said. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Chief Minister, K Lakshminarayanan, too echoed his views and said the government would appeal against the order in the Supreme Court.
