It was an eventful day at the Madras High Court on Monday with a single judge as well as a Division Bench turning down a plea made by Perambur MLA P. Vetrivel to restrain Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami and Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam from going ahead with their plans to conduct a joint general council meet of the AIADMK factions led by them.
Sitting as late as 9:15 p.m. and delivering their verdict in a packed court hall, a Division Bench of Justices Rajiv Shakder and Abdul Quddhose concurred with the decision taken by Justice C.V. Karthikeyan earlier in the morning that the court could not issue an injunction against holding of the meeting. The Bench, however, made it clear that any decision taken at the meeting would be subject to the final outcome of the appeal preferred against the single judge’s order.
‘Relief available later’
Directing the CM, Deputy CM and other respondents to file their replies to the original side appeal within two weeks and adjourning further hearing on it to October 23, the Bench also said: “Needless to say that the observations made by us would in no manner impact the decision that the EC will take in the dispute pending before it.”
Accepting the submissions made by Senior Counsel C. Aryama Sundaram, representing Mr. Palaniswami, that preventing the meet would affect 2,140 members of the general council, the Bench said: “We see no impediment in law if the rival factions choose to get together and jointly convene a meeting. The holding of the meeting by itself may or may not grant legitimacy to the outcome reached at the meeting.”
The judges also observed that the holding of the meeting could not cause irreparable harm to Mr. Vetrivel since he could always challenge the decisions taken in the proposed meet. “The fact that the appellant espouses the cause of respondent No. 4 (Mr. Dhinakaran) is not lost on us. The appellant, in our view, should have displayed more candour in acknowledging that the relief claimed in the suit...seeks to advance the cause of respondent No. 4.”
In his judgement, Mr. Justice Karthikeyan had imposed a cost of ₹1 lakh on Mr. Vetrivel after holding him guilty of filing a vexatious litigation. Stating that it was condemnable to have included Mr. Dhinakaran as one of the defendants, the judge said: “This, in simple terms, is collusion and then the entire character of the suit becomes vexatious.”
