Justice Anita Sumanth of the Madras High Court on Thursday made it clear that she intends to decide the merits as well and not just the maintainability of three writ petitions that had questioned the authority under which Ministers Udhayanidhi Stalin, P.K. Sekarbabu and Member of Parliament A. Raja are continuing to be legislators despite having taken a stand against Sanatana Dharma.
The judge asked Advocate General R. Shunmugasundaram representing the State and Senior Counsel P. Wilson, N. Jothi and R. Viduthalai representing the two Ministers and the MP respectively, to ensure that their clients file counter affidavits by Monday on the question of maintainability as well as the merits of the case. “I am not going to pass a separate order on maintainability,” the judge told them.
Though the Senior Counsel, in unison, requested the court to first decide the maintainability since they were confident that the petitions should not be entertained at all at the first instance, the judge clarified that she does not want to pass truncated orders. “I propose to pass the orders on the writ petition itself,” she said and warned the lawyers against taking the risk of not filing counter affidavits on merits.
Earlier, in the day, the judge heard arguments advanced by Senior Counsel T.V. Ramanujam, G. Rajagopalan and G. Karthikeyan on behalf of the three writ petitioners T. Manohar, J. Kishore Kumar, and V.P. Jayakumar who were office-bearers of Hindu Munnani but had filed the cases in their personal capacities. Mr. Rajagopalan argued that Santana Dharma and Hindu Dharma were one and the same.
He contended that Mr. Sekarbabu, despite being a Minister for Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments, ought not to have participated in a conference organised by Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers Artists Association in Chennai on September 2 calling for the annihilation of Sanatana Dharma. “The HR&CE Minister may not have spoken in the conference but he sat there clapping and acknowledging the speeches,” he said.
Mr. Karthikeyan pointed out that after the conference and the speeches made in other places, a defence had been taken by the respondents that Sanatana Dharma was different from Hindu Dharma. “However, right in the conference, Dravidar Kazhagam leader K. Veeramani had said that Sanatana Dharma was no different from Hindu Dharma and none of the participants objected to that statement,” he told the judge.
On the other hand, the Advocate General cited a long list of Supreme Court decisions including those that had been rendered by seven-judge benches to contend that a writ of quo warranto would not lie against the Ministers. He argued that the Supreme Court had made it clear that the Ministers could be removed from office or disqualified only in accordance with the constitutional and statutory provisions.
“A writ of quo warranto can be issued only against a person who has usurped public office. That is the law laid down by the Supreme Court consistently. Let us not waste the court’s time by going into the merits of the case. The courts cannot do something that is not provided for in the Constitution or in the statutes. The basis for removal from office or disqualification are finite and nothing more could be read into it,” he said.
Since only the A-G could complete his arguments by the end of the day, the judge asked the Senior Counsel representing the two Ministers and the MP to argue on Monday after which the counsel for the writ petitioners would be given an opportunity to reply.
Published - October 12, 2023 10:14 pm IST
