Times of India: Madurai: Wednesday,
April 12, 2017.
The Madras
high court Madurai bench on Tuesday encouraged a public interest litigation
petitioner to use the Right to Information Act to obtain information from the
Speaker on his representation seeking disqualification of the chief minister
and four ministers.
T Analagan
from Srivilliputur had filed the PIL plea seeking to disqualify chief minister
Edappadi K Palaniswami and four ministers K A Sengottaian, Sellur K Raju, G
Srinivasan and R Kamaraj for their alleged breach of constitutional provisions
by directing the Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker to forward his representations
dated March 13 and 16 to the Governor.
On Tuesday,
when the matter came up before the division bench headed by justice A Selvam,
the court said it had no authority to issue the direction to the speaker or
governor. If there was any judgment of the Supreme Court enabling the high
court to issue direction in such a matter, the petitioner's side may produce it
before the court, the bench said.
However, the
petitioner's counsel insisted on issuing a direction to the speaker. Following
this, the bench asked the counsel "Did you (the petitioner) receive any
response to the representation submitted to the speaker?" The counsel said
'No'. Then the court suggested, "If you did not receive reply, you apply
under the RTI Act seeking information from the speaker," and adjourned the
case to April 28.
The
petitioner had said in his petition that the four ministers visited AIADMK
general secretary VK Sasikala in jail and discussed with her the functioning of
the government. The chief minister however did not object to these statements.
Hence, these five people including the CM had violated the oath of secrecy
under the constitution. They should be declared disqualified from the post of
ministers and also from the post of MLA by the governor, the petitioned had
contended.