The Madras High Court on Wednesday said a government is “a trustee for the little man who should not have a perception that the running of the government is a gigantic conspiracy”.
It held that the role of Puducherry’s Lieutenant Governor and that of an elected government in the Union Territory were intertwined as per law, and therefore they were expected to act in unison and not in division.
Chief Justice Amreshwar Pratap Sahi and Justice Subramonium Prasad gave the ruling, setting aside the judgment of a single judge who, according to the Bench, had delivered a verdict in favour of the elected government and held that the L-G could not interfere with its day-to-day functioning by fostering a “basically incorrect” opinion that the legislature of the Union Territory was on a par with that of a State.
“The view of the learned single judge suffers from a basic fallacy of drawing a parallel on the basis of expected notions of democracy and republicanism vis-a-vis the status of elected legislature of a Union Territory and that of a State. This cannot be done by a judicial pronouncement and has to be through a legislative process by the appropriate legislature. For the time being, there is no such law that may equate or put them at par,” the Bench said.
