Supreme Court drops plea against Jayalalithaa

The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed as infructuous a petition filed by a Chennai lawyer questioning whether former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa could be categorised and tried as a public servant in a pending DA case.

The petition was dismissed by a Bench led by Justice P.C. Ghose after Karnataka government counsel, advocate Joseph Aristotle, informed the court that Jayalalithaa was no more.

The Supreme Court had in the case agreed to settle the law on whether Chief Ministers or Ministers of government could actually be treated as “public servants” on par with government functionaries performing public duties.

Also read: Are Chief Ministers ‘public servants?’

The apex court, which has reserved the appeals filed against the High Court’s acquittal of the accused in the wealth case, had even issued notice to the parties arraigned in the petition, including the Centre, the Karnataka government, DMK leader K. Anbazhagan, Jayalalithaa and BJP leader Subramanian Swamy.

The petition, filed by advocate R. Rajavel, had said that there was no clear statutory provision defining a Chief Minister as a public servant. Written law or statutes enacted by the parliament did not include political persons in the category of public servants.

However, the Supreme Court had, on February 20, 1979 in a decision in the case M. Karunanidhi versus Union of India, held the post of Chief Minister as that of a “public servant”.