The six suo motu criminal revision petitions taken up by the Madras High Court against the acquittal/discharge of four sitting as well as two former Ministers in Tamil Nadu from different criminal cases took a significant turn on Tuesday, with the portfolio judge wanting to know whether procedures were followed scrupulously before numbering them.
Justice G. Jayachandran directed advocate M. Santhanaraman, representing the High Court’s Registrar General, to obtain instructions as to whether Justice N. Anand Venkatesh’s decision to take suo motu cognisance was run by a three-member committee of the High Court, constituted in 2019, to consider suo motu litigations.
Justice Jayachandran pointed out that another single judge of the High Court had taken up a similar suo motu writ petition during the latter’s tenure in the Madurai Bench in 2022. It was taken up on the basis of a letter received by him complaining about corruption by a Registration department employee at Pattukottai.
The Registry of the Madurai Bench numbered the suo motu writ petition without the approval of the Chief Justice and without informing the administrative judge in the Bench. The petition was also listed for hearing before the same judge who had taken suo motu cognisance and he issued certain directions too.
Subsequently, when it got listed before a Division Bench of Justices Paresh Upadhyay (since retired) and R. Vijayakumar on April 5, 2022, they wrote that all public interest litigation petitions as well as writ petitions filed by and against the High Court must be listed only before a Division Bench as per the roster.
The Bench also recalled that the administrative committee (comprising the Chief Justice and six senior judges) of the High Court had on October 24, 2019 resolved to constitute a committee comprising three judges to consider whether letters received by individual judges of the court could be taken up as suo motu PIL petitions.
Therefore, Justice Jayachandran wanted to know from the Registrar General whether the six suo motu criminal revision petitions too were numbered only after being placed before the three member committee and whether such procedure was confined only to PIL petitions and not criminal revision petitions.
When Mr. Santhanaraman sought time till January 4 to obtain instructions, the judge acceded to his request and ordered listing of all six suo motu revision petitions on January 8. He wrote that the revision petitions could not be heard on merits until the Registrar General answers the queries regarding the procedures.
Since there shall be a shuffle in allocation of portfolios to the High Court judges from January 2, 2024, Justice Jayachandran would continue to hear the suo motu revision petitions only if he continues to hold the portfolio for MP/MLA cases, else the petitions would get listed before the next portfolio judge.
The revision petitions had been taken up against Rural Development Minister I. Periyasamy, Higher Education Minister K. Ponmudy, Revenue Minister K.K.S.S.R. Ramachandran and Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu apart from former Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam and former Social Welfare Minister B. Valarmathi.
