Chennai: Alleging that the ruling AIADMK was trying to scuttle its MLAs from attending the Tamilnadu Assembly session beginning on Monday, the Opposition DMK today moved the Madras High Court against the fresh privilege notice issued to them for displaying banned gutkha products in the House.
In a statement here, DMK president M K Stalin, who is also the leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly, said he along with his other party MLAs have filed a writ petition in the High Court against the fresh notice issued by Aseembly Deputy Speaker Pollachi V Jayaraman, who heads the Privileges Committee.
He said the First Bench of Chief Justice A P Sahi and Mr Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy had on 25 August, citing ‘Foundational errors’, set aside the privilege notices issued against him and 17 of his party MLAs for displaying banned gutka packets in the Assembly in July 2017.
The Court had also said that the privilege committee is at liberty to issue fresh notices if it still feels that the act amounts to breach of privilege to them and the Legislators could appear before it and present
their arguments.
Following this, the Committee again met on 7 September on an issue that took place three years back and fresh notices were issued to the DMK MLAs asking them to reply to it on 14 September, when the brief three-day Assembly session begins.
Stating that motive behind issuance of fresh notices was to prevent DMK MLAs from attending the session and the scuttle them from raising the alleged inept handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in the House, the DMK chief said hence he and the other legislators have filed a new writ plea in the Court challenging the notice.
It may be recalled that the DMK legislators had on 19 July, 2017 displayed gutkha sachets in the House to substantiate their claim that the banned items were being freely available in petty shops.
Though breach of privilege proceedings were initiated against 21 DMK MLAs and all of them had approached the High Court, two MLAs–K P P Samy and J Anbazhagan–died and another MLA Ku Ka Selvam was dismissed from the party and hence not represented by any counsel before the Court.
After a single Judge had granted an interim stay stating that no action should be taken against the notices issued to the DMK MLAs, the Legislative Assembly Secretary filed an appeal seeking to vacate the stay after which the case was referred to a two-member Bench.