The 21 DMK legislators who had approached the Madras High Court challenging individual show-cause notices issued to them by the Chairman of Assembly Privileges committee, for carrying gutkha, which is a banned in the State, into the House on July19, faced a tough time in getting their cases numbered due to an internal circular issued by the court on March 21.
During the forenoon session on Wednesday, senior counsel R. Shanmugasundaram, representing the legislators, made a mention before Justice M. Duraiswamy, the portfolio judge, that the High Court registry was delaying the process of numbering the writ petitions and sought for a direction to number the cases and list them for hearing on Thursday.
However, referring to the circular issued by the Registrar (Judicial) to the heads of all sections in the High Court registry that no case involving ministers, MPs and MLAs should be numbered without bringing it to the notice of the Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Duraiswamy asked Mr. Shanmugasundaram to make a mention before the Chief Justice.
Accordingly, the issue was mentioned before the First Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M. Sundar who accepted the request for early hearing and issued an oral direction to the court staff to list the matter on Thursday. Nevertheless, the court officials refused to number the cases without obtaining written instructions.
Chief Justice intervenes
Senior counsel P. Wilson took the matter to the notice of the Division Bench led by the Chief Justice, just minutes before she retired to her chambers in the evening, and informed that the Registry had put up an official note before her seeking permission to number the cases filed by the DMK legislators.
After perusing the note, the Chief Justice pointed out that the circular (issued during the tenure of Justice Huluvadi G. Ramesh as the Acting Chief Justice of the High Court) only states that cases wherein Ministers, MPs and MLAs were parties must be numbered only after bringing them to the notice of the Chief Justice.
Further, pointing out that the circular does not impress upon the need to obtain prior permission of the Chief Justice, she said: “Any way, now that a note has been put up, I’ll look into it.”
The original circular issued on March 21 had directed the court officials to number cases in which Ministers, MPs and MLAs were parties only after placing the entire case bundle before the Chief Justice and obtaining prior approval. However, after The Hindu carried a report on the circular, it was modified partially on April 3.
The modified circular read: “As directed by the Honourable Acting Chief Justice, all the Appeal Examiners/Heads of Filing Sections of the Registry, both in the principal seat of Madras and the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court are hereby directed to number the case in respect of cases wherein MLAs, MPs and sitting ministers (both Central and State) are parties, only after bringing it to the notice of the Honourable the Chief Justice.”
