The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Friday permitted advocate P. Rathinam to file a writ petition, in the capacity as party-in-person, seeking a direction to the State to furnish the government order on the release of 13 convicts in the Melavalavu massacre case.
After the writ petition was filed by advocate Rathinam in the individual capacity as party-in-person, the High Court Registry had doubts about the maintainability of the petition in view of Rule 3 (3) of the High Court of Madras (Conduct of Proceedings by Party-In-Person) Rules, 2019.
The rule stipulates that a party-in-person includes a person who intends to plead, appear and argue his or her own case before the High Court and not through an advocate.
Qualified for the task
Mr. Rathinam told the registry that since he was an advocate himself, there was no bar to appear as party-in-person.
When the writ petition was listed ‘for maintainability’ before the court, he argued that under Rule 10, the court had the power to exercise its discretion to permit a litigant to appear-in-person and conduct the proceedings in court.
A Division Bench of Justices S. Vaidyanathan and N. Anand Venkatesh observed that when Rule 10 gave discretionary power to the court, it had to be used liberally.
The court said that if affected persons were not permitted to appear before the court as party-in-person, they would not be in a position to defend the matter effectively and rules should not come in the way to prevent an affected person to represent a case before the court. The court directed the Registry to get an undertaking under Form B as per Rule 8 (b) to ensure that the decorum of the court was maintained.
The undertaking should be given in the prescribed format along with photo identity proof and current address with mobile number.
If the documents were in order, the Registry shall number and list the writ petition for admission on November 18, it said.
