What is the right of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Secretariat and its Privilege Committee to withdraw the writ appeals filed in February 2021 against the 2020 order passed by the Single Judge in favor of the present Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M. K. Stalin and some DMK MLAs? The Madras High Court raised the question on Wednesday.
In 2017, a case was filed against them for displaying gutka packages in the Lok Sabha.
When these appeals were listed before a division bench comprising Justices SM Subramaniam and C. Kumarappan, Additional Public Prosecutor (APP) R. Muniapparaj argued for the withdrawal of the appeals.
But since the DMK has come to power in the state in May 2021, the senior judge on the bench asked how justified it was for the appellants to do so.
Asked what a common man would think of the Judiciary if it filed appeals during one regime and allowed them to be withdrawn during the next, the judge asked whether the government would withdraw a writ appeal filed against an ordinary civil servant. He directed to get formal instructions on the issue from the Legislative Secretariat and the Privileges Committee by July 2.
When the DMK was in opposition, Gutka packets were displayed to highlight the sale of banned items during the AIADMK regime. It is noteworthy that the first show cause notice issued by the Privilege Committee to Stalin as the then Leader of Opposition and other DMK MLAs was quashed by a Division Bench of the High Court in August 2020.
