Chennai, June 1 (BPNS)
Madras High Court on Wednesday reserved orders on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against installing a statue of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister late M. Karunanidhi at Tiruvannamalai.
The court deferred the verdict after it had been informed that the statue would be unveiled on June 3rd, the birth anniversary of the late Chief Minister.
A division bench of the Madras High court represented by Justices Mohammed Shaffiq and M.S. Ramesh took the decision after E.V. Kumaran of Jeeva Educational Trust filed an application to vacate an interim injunction granted by the court on May 19th restraining the trust from installing the statue. E.V. Kumaran is the son of state PWD minister and DMK leader, E.V. Velu.
Senior Counsel, S. Prabhakaran representing the Jeeva Educational Trust informed the court that no public land was encroached on for constructing the statute and that it was on private land owned by the trust.
Advocate Prabhakaran also told the court for an urgent hearing on the matter as the birth anniversary of the late Chief Minister was on June 3rd.
Additional Advocate General, J. Ravindran representing the official respondents questioned the PIL filed by a person named Karthik who was a scrap dealer in Chennai, and wondered how he as a Chennai resident was in the know of the ground situation at Tiruvannamalai.
The AAG also stated in the court that according to law the litigant filing the PIL will have to disclose the specific sources from which he or she had collected information with respect to the allegations leveled. The AAG said that in this PIL, the petitioner had made a general statement that he had made inquiries with the locals.
The court asked the litigant’s counsel as to how his client was in the know of things in Tiruvannamalai and also wanted to know why a PIL was filed against installing a statue at a private party’s land. The counsel replied that the ‘patta’ or land rights were fabricated to which the court said that the PIL should have been against the validity of the ‘patta’ and not against the installation of the statue.
