The Madras High Court on Wednesday refused to pass an interim order on a petition filed by DMK working president M.K.Stalin seeking directions to the authorities to annul the trust vote conducted in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on Saturday.
A bench of Acting Chief Justice Huluvadi G. Ramesh and Justice R. Mahadevan wondered what made the party to move such a plea when the issue was only between Chief Minister Edappadi Palanisamy and former chief minister O. Panneerselvam. It questioned the petitioner as to in what way he was aggrieved by the issue.
Shanmugasundaram, who appeared for the DMK, said: “The petitioner who is also the leader of the opposition was stopped near the war memorial and made to walk all the way to the assembly. Also, all the DMK members, including the petitioner, were illegally evicted from the House when they sought a secret ballot.”
Senior Counsel N.L. Rajah, who appeared for the Advocates Forum for Social Justice, another petitioner seeking similar relief, submitted that the fact that all the AIADMK (Sasikala) MLAs were escorted to the Assembly in buses was a clear indication that they were under ‘illegal detention’. “Moreover, there is an FIR pending against Palaniswami in connection with illegal detention of MLAs,” he said.
Unconvinced, the bench sought to know whether the petitioners have any video recording to prove their allegations. To this, Shanmugasundaram said that only a particular private channel was allowed to record the proceedings and sought the court to pass a direction to the assembly secretary to produce the recordings.
Declining to pass any direction, the bench suggested to the petitioners to collect and submit such videos for the perusal of the court, and adjourned the petitions to February 27 for further hearing.