Keeping up with the practice of law officers tendering resignations during every change in the composition of the government, the State Public Prosecutor (SPP) R. Rajarathinam as well as Government Pleader (GP) M.K. Subramanian have put in their papers as Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami and Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam had begun to consolidate their position much to the chagrin of V.K. Sasikala and T.T.V. Dhinakaran loyalists.
Officials in the Law Office at the Madras High Court stated that many more resignations, including that of Additional Advocate Generals, were in the offing. They pointed out that both Mr. Rajarathinam, once associated with Senior Counsel B. Kumar who had represented former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in many cases, and Mr. Subramanian, were appointed as SPP and GP respectively just a month before Jayalalithaa was hospitalised on September 22 last year. The two lawyers claimed they were resigning due to personal reasons, sources said.
Meanwhile, Advocate-General Vijay Narayan forwarded their resignations to the State government and appointed Additional Public Prosecutor C. Emilias as State Public Prosecutor (in-charge) and Special Government Pleader T.N. Rajagopalan as Government Pleader (in-charge) in order to avoid a vacuum until regular appointments.
Court officials pointed out that appointment of a new SPP and GP might take some time since the former post could not be filled up without a consultation with the High Court as required under Section 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and the latter had to be filled only in accordance with the recommendations of a committee to be constituted as per Law Officers of High Court of Madras and its Bench at Madurai (Appointment) Rules of 2017.
