Chennai, July 2(BPNS)

The Madras High Court on Friday heard a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed to wind up the single man commission probing the death of former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa.

The one-man Commission headed by Justice (Rtd)Arumughaswamy was constituted on August 25,2017 and as per its order the commission was to complete its hearing within three months of constituting it and had to give a detailed report in both English and Tamil. However, the time of the commission was extended from time. A person, Thondan Subramani filed the PIL in the Madras High Court directing the court to cease the operations of the commission and to prevent the huge loss of money for the state government.

The first bench of the Madras High Court represented by Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy on Friday wondered as to why they should not direct the Justice Arumughaswamy commission to complete the inquiry and to file a report in three months’ time.

It is to be noted that the management of the Apollo hospital where the former Chief Minister  died approached the Supreme Court regarding the correctness of the commission’s inquiry particularly the medical treatment provided to her. In 2019, the Supreme Court had stayed the entire proceedings of the commission following another petition moved by the Apollo hospital.

The petitioner in his plea said that there was no progress in the activities of the commission but the taxpayer’s money was spent on the defunct commission. He also prayed that neither the state government nor the commission had moved the Supreme court to vacate the interim stay. The court admitted the plea and directed the state government to file its report in six weeks’ time on the PIL.