With the Rajya Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu scheduled for June 27, the six DMDK MLAs who have been suspended from the Legislative Assembly for six months have moved the Madras High Court seeking to stay an order of a single Judge to enable them to participate in the elections.
The First Bench headed by Acting Chief Justice R.K. Agrawal has ordered notice to the Secretary of the Legislative Assembly and posted the matter for further hearing on June 24.
The six legislators — V.C. Chandhira Kumar, P. Parthasarathi, T. Murugesan, K. Nallathambi, S. Senthilkumar and R. Arulselvan — were suspended from the Assembly in March this year.
They challenged the suspension before the High Court. By an order of June 5, a single Judge dismissed the writ petition. He had ruled that there were no merits in the petitioners’ contention.
Aggrieved, the six filed appeals and they were pending.
The appellants counsel, K.M. Vijayan, said that the single Judge in his order had said that “Denial of salary and other privileges like voting in an election are not constitutional rights nor the fundamental rights and in such circumstances, it is not open to the petitioners to contend that as these rights are affected, the impugned proceedings are violated and are liable to be set aside.”
