Sasikala seeks early hearing in civil suit against Chief Minister, others

City Civil Court has listed her case for hearing on March 15

Former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s close aide V.K. Sasikala and her nephew T.T.V. Dhinakaran have approached the Registry of the city civil court seeking early listing of a civil suit filed by them challenging AIADMK-related decisions taken by Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami and others.

The suit, which was filed in the Madras High Court in 2017, sought to declare that Mr. Palaniswami, Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam, Forest Minister Dindigul C. Sreenivasan, former Minister S. Semmalai and AIADMK presidium chairman E. Madusudhanan are not members of the party. Further, they submitted that all actions done by them in their capacity as its office-bearers are illegal and against the bylaws of the AIADMK.

The plaintiffs also sought for a direction to restrain the defendants from operating the bank accounts of the AIADMK.

Passing interim orders in the suit on November 2, 2017, Justice C.V. Karthikeyan had directed the managers of three bank branches, in which the AIADMK had accounts, to furnish details of transactions carried out between December 29, 2016, and November 29, 2017. Manager of AIADMK headquarters P. Mahalingam was also directed to submit a list of records and registers and ensure that they were not tampered with.

“Subsequently, the case got transferred from the High Court to the city civil court in December 2020 due to the pecuniary jurisdiction of the High Court having been increased from ₹25 lakh to ₹1 crore. In 2017, we had valued the suit to be ₹25 lakh. Now that it had been transferred, we gave a letter to the registry of the city civil court on Monday for early listing of the case and the case has been listed for hearing on March 15,” said their counsel N. Raja Senthoor Pandian.

He stated that another civil suit filed by the AIADMK, represented by its co-coordinator Mr. Palaniswami, in March 2018 for preventing Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) founded by Mr. Dhinakaran, from using a flag “deceptively” similar to that of the AIADMK’s flag, had also been transferred from the High Court to the III Additional Judge in the City Civil Court. “On our part, every possible attempt is being made for early hearing of the civil suit filed by us in 2017 since the case is ripe for final hearing,” he said.