The judiciary cannot direct Tamil Nadu Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao to ask Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami to prove his majority in the Legislative Assembly as he (Governor) enjoys constitutional immunity from answering courts with respect of performance of his official duties, Advocate General Vijay Narayan contended in the Madras High Court on Tuesday.
Mr. Narayan made the submission before the First Bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M. Sundar, which was hearing a public interest litigation petition seeking such a direction to the Governor. The judges posted the petition to October 3 for deciding its maintainability. Curiously, the Chief Minister was not represented by any lawyer in the court during the hearing of the case.
When the Chief Justice wanted to know who was appearing for the Chief Minister, none of the law officers responded positively. Subsequently, the Bench went on to hear the petitioner’s counsel M. Radhakrishnan who contended that democratic polity in the State was at stake since the Chief Minister did not enjoy the support of a majority of the MLAs in the House.
Referring to a letter submitted by 19 AIADMK MLAs, owing allegiance to sidelined party leader T.T.V. Dhinakaran, to the Governor on August 22 expressing lack of confidence in the Chief Minister, the counsel said that Mr. Palaniswami had won the trust vote in February this year with the support of 122 MLAs but had now fallen short of the minimum support of 117 MLAs.
‘An intra-party affair’
However, the Advocate General told the court that the letter given by the 19 MLAs was an intra-party affair which does not warrant the interference of the Governor. He argued that the MLAs had not said that they had lost confidence in the government as such and that it was not necessary for all MLAs of a party enjoying majority in the House to support the Chief Minister candidate.
Explaining his case with an example, Mr. Narayan said: “Out of 150 MLAs in a party with a majority in the House, 140 may feel that ‘X’ is better as a CM and 10 may feel that ‘Y’ is better. Once ‘X’ is appointed to the post, the 10 MLAs will naturally have a grievance but as long as a majority of MLAs of the ruling party feel that ‘X’ is better as CM, the Governor cannot interfere.”
He said the PIL petition filed by Chennai-based advocate P. Pugalenthi was not maintainable on the face of it. The petitioner had not produced any document but for a letter reportedly written by M.K. Stalin, the Leader of the Opposition, on August 25 demanding a floor test. He claimed that a third party could not file such a case.
“Let us assume that the Leader of the Opposition had given a letter, then it is for him to approach the court. This is the case of a top political party shooting over the shoulders of a litigant. These are just publicity interest litigations. His whole idea is to come to the court and give it to the press,” the Advocate General contended.
