The Madras High Court on Monday dismissed a public interest litigation petition seeking a direction to the Union Finance Ministry to issue a comprehensive speaking order on a representation made by the litigant providing suggestions on bringing back black money stashed abroad.
Interim replies
A Division Bench of Justices S. Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad refused to entertain the PIL petition filed by advocate R. Natarajan on the ground that he had been pursuing the matter under the Right to Information (RTI) Act of 2005 too and he had already received some interim replies. In his affidavit, the petitioner recalled that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had formed a task force comprising journalist S. Gurumurthy, incumbent National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and a few others in 2011 to recommend ways to retrieve black money stashed abroad.
Hence, the petitioner adopted those recommendations and submitted a representation to the Finance Ministry, along with additional suggestions, on January 5, 2018.
Since there was no response, he filed RTI applications wanting to know the status of his representation and got interim replies stating that his applications had been forwarded to the department of revenue.
