The Madras High Court on Wednesday directed the counsel for Election Commission of India (ECI) to produce by Thursday the final order passed by the Supreme Court in a case in which it had issued an interim order in 2004 stating that decisions taken by State level Media Certification and Monitoring Committees (MCMC), headed by the Chief Electoral Officers, can be challenged only before the apex court.
First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice J. Sathya Narayana Prasad agreed with senior counsel R. Shunmugasundaram, representing DMK, that interim orders would lose value after the passing of final order in a case. However, when they wanted to peruse the final order in the relevant case, the judges were told that it was not available on the Supreme Court website.
ECI counsel Niranjan Rajagopalan said, the Supreme Court had passed a final order in the case on November 9, 2006 but he could not lay his hands on it immediately. He sought a week’s time to produce the order copy. However, Mr. Shunmugasundaram said, the DMK would lose the opportunity of advertising in newspapers for the Lok Sabha polls if such a long adjournment was granted to submit the order copy.
He told the court that only the video and audio campaign materials of the political parties could not be used beyond 6 pm on Wednesday, the last day for campaigning for this year’s Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu, whereas the posters, pre-certified by the MCMC, could be printed in the newspapers till Friday, the day of polling in Tamil Nadu. Therefore, the judges decided to hear the matter on Thursday.
The DMK had approached the court challenging the refusal of the MCMC to pre-certify some of its posters, videos and audio recordings. It had also questioned the constitutional validity of clause 3.8 in part B of the ECI’s August 24, 2023 instructions which state that decisions taken by the MCMC, with respect to pre-certification, could be challenged only before the Supreme Court and not any other court.
Mr. Shunmugasundaram had contended that the ECI could not take away, through an executive fiat, the writ jurisdiction conferred on the High Courts under Article 226 of the Constitution. On the other hand, Mr. Rajagopalan told the court that the restriction was imposed only on the basis of an interim order passed by the Supreme Court on April 13, 2004.
