The State government on Thursday informed the Madras High Court that Governor Banwarilal Purohit had granted assent to the Tamil Nadu Puratchi Thalaivi Dr. J. Jayalalithaa Memorial Foundation Bill of 2020 on October 17 and that the law had come into force in the State from October 19 after due publication in the gazette.
Chief Justice Amreshwar Pratap Sahi and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy were informed about the developments by Advocate-General Vijay Narayan.
The submissions were made during the hearing of a case filed by Jayalalithaa’s nephew J. Deepak challenging an Ordinance promulgated for converting “Veda Nilayam”, her Poes Garden residence, into a memorial. Now that the Ordinance had been replaced with an Act, the petitioner could withdraw the present case and file a fresh writ petition challenging the Act, the A-G said.
Petitioner’s advocate S.L. Sudarsanam agreed to withdraw the case but expressed difficulty in accessing the Act. When Chief Justice pointed out that it might not be difficult to get a copy of the gazette, the A-G said he would share a copy with the counsel.
Later, the judges closed the writ petition challenging the Ordinance after granting liberty to the petitioner to challenge the Act, which provides for acquiring even movable assets such as furniture, books and jewellery left behind by Jayalalithaa at her residence and maintain the memorial through the Foundation, comprising the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister as its members.
