The Chief Justice of Madras High Court Indira Banerjee has decided to hear on Tuesday a contempt of court petition filed against Puducherry Legislative Assembly Secretary for alleged disobedience of a judgment passed by the court on March 22 upholding the nomination of three MLAs by the Centre.
When Ms. Justice Banerjee was informed that Assembly Speaker V. Vaithilingam refused to permit the three nominated MLAs to attend the ongoing Assembly sessions, she asked the petitioner’s counsel to approach the Supreme Court since it was seized of an appeal preferred against the March 22 judgment.
However, the counsel told her that the Supreme Court had refused to stay the High Court judgment in favour of the nominated MLAs and produced a copy of the interim order too. After perusing the order, the Chief Justice asked the counsel if any contempt of court petition had been filed and he replied in the affirmative.
Procedural hurdle
Ms. Justice Banerjee said the contempt petition would have to be heard by the same judges who had passed the judgment in March. Justice M. Sundar, her companion judge in that Division Bench, was now presiding over the proceedings in the Madurai Bench of the High Court. Finding a solution to the problem, the Chief Justice said that she had planned to sit in the Madurai Bench on Tuesday and therefore, the contempt petition filed here could be heard by herself and Mr. Justice Sundar from Madurai through video conferencing on that day. The counsel could advance their arguments from here, she said.
She issued suitable directions to the High Court Registry to list the matter for hearing through video conferencing.
If the hearing happens as planned, then it would be the first time that the first Division Bench of the High Court, led by the Chief Justice, would be hearing a case through video conferencing between Chennai and Madurai.
On March 22, the Division Bench had dismissed a couple of writ petitions challenging a gazette notification published by the Centre on July 4, 2017, nominating Bharatiya Janata Party Puducherry unit chief V. Saminathan, its treasurer K.G. Shankar, and educationist S. Selva Ganapathy to the Puducherry Assembly.
