The Madras High Court on Wednesday refused to grant any interim relief to the DMK, which has challenged the manner in which voting was conducted on the Motion of Confidence moved by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami in the Assembly on Saturday last. It also asked Leader of the Opposition and party working president M.K. Stalin to produce video recordings to substantiate his case.
After two days of persuasion by Mr. Stalin’s counsel R. Shanmugasundaram, who had sought an urgent hearing of his PIL petition to declare the decision of the Assembly Speaker [accepting the vote of confidence moved by the Chief Minister] as illegal, null and void, the court finally took up the matter for hearing on Wednesday.
The First Bench of Acting Chief Justice Huluvadi G. Ramesh and Justice R. Mahadevan wondered what made the DMK to move such a plea when the issue was only between the Chief Minister and the former Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam. It questioned the petitioner as to in what way he was aggrieved by the issue. To this, Mr. Shanmugasundaram said, “The petitioner who is also the Leader of the Opposition was stopped near the War Memorial and made to walk all the way to the Assembly. Also, all the DMK members, including the petitioner, were illegally evicted from the House when they sought a secret ballot.” Senior Counsel N.L. Rajah, who appeared for the Advocates Forum for Social Justice, another petitioner seeking similar relief, submitted that the fact that all the AIADMK (Sasikala) MLAs were escorted to the Assembly in buses was a clear indication that they were under ‘illegal detention’. “Moreover, there is an FIR pending against Mr. Palaniswami in connection with illegal detention of MLAs,” he said.
Unconvinced, the Bench sought to know whether the petitioners have any video recording to prove their allegations. To this, Mr. Shanmugasundaram said that only a particular private channel was allowed to record the proceedings and sought the court to pass a direction to the Assembly Secretary to produce the recordings.
‘Submit any evidence’
Declining to pass any direction, the Bench suggested that the petitioners collect and submit any such videos for the perusal of the court, and adjourned the PIL petitions to February 27 for further hearing. In the meantime, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Wednesday transferred to its principal seat in Chennai a similar public interest litigation petition filed by T. Anazhagan, son of former AIADMK MLA Thamaraikani.
A Division Bench of Justices A. Selvam and P. Kalaiyarasan directed the Registry to transfer the case after it was informed that two other similar cases were pending before the principal seat.
