HC adjourns hearing on DMK MLAs privilege notice

The Madras High Court today adjourned till October 27 hearing on two petitions-- one challenging the privilege notices issued to 21 DMK MLAs and the other seeking disqualification of Tamil Nadu deputy chief minister O Panneerselvam and 10 other legislators.
Justice K Ravichandra Baabu adjourned the cases after hearing submissions by state Advocate General Vijay Narayan and senior counsel Kapil Sibal.
When the court first took up the petition challenging the privilege notice issued to the DMK MLAs for displaying banned 'gutkha' packets in the assembly, Narayan appearing for the Assembly Secretary submitted that they would like to file a counter and argue on the maintainability of the petition.

The assembly privileges committee, headed by Deputy Speaker Pollachi V Jayaraman, had on August 28 issued notice to Stalin and 20 other DMK MLAs for having brought gutkha packets to the House in July.
The court had last month restrained the committee from passing any order on the matter until further orders.
The other petition filed by DMK Whip R Sakkrapani seeks a direction to the Assembly Speaker to disqualify Panneerselvam and 10 others MLAs who had on February 18 voted against the incumbent Chief Minister K Palaniswami's vote of confidence.

Arguing for the petitioner, Sibal said even seven months after the vote of confidence, the Speaker had not served notice to the 11 MLAs.

Instead, Panneerselvam, who led the then rebel MLAs, had been made Deputy Chief Minister, he said claiming that it was only to ensure majority for the present government.
At this, Justice Baabu asked the Advocate General why the speaker was not filing the counter in this case.
The A-G submitted that first they would like to argue on the maintainability of these petitions and sought time for filing the counter to the DMK Whip's petition.
Following this, the court adjourned both the matters to October 27.