HC’s vote curb on TVK MLA ‘atrocious to say the least’: SC

NEW DELHI: Hours before the crucial floor test for TVK govt in Tamil Nadu, which is holding a wafer-thin majority in the assembly, Vijay’s govt got a boost in its strength with the Supreme Court on Wednesday allowing its MLA Srinivasa Sethupathi to participate in the floor test and said that the Madras HC order barring him from assembly proceedings was “atrocious to say the least”.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and Vijay Bishnoi stayed the order of the Madras high court against Sethupathi who had won from Tirupattur constituency by one vote. “This (HC order) is atrocious to say the least. HC says remedy is election petition and still entertains the writ petition,” the bench observed, at the beginning of the hearing.



The Supreme Court accepted the plea of senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi that the court must intervene to allow the MLA to participate in the floor test. He said that strong strictures needed to be passed against HC for passing such an order.

“In the meantime, the effect and operation of the impugned order shall remain stayed and further proceedings before the high court in the pending writ petition shall also remain stayed,” the bench said. Sethupathi approached SC through advocate Yash S. Vijay and submitted that HC has committed a very grave error in law by giving this settled and binding precedent a complete go-by in passing sweeping and far-reaching directions in a writ petition. “Seventy five years of constitutional jurisprudence have held steadfast that the species of legal challenges calling into question an election to the state legislative assembly or the Parliament are a special class of disputes falling within a self-governed complete code under Article 324 to Article 329 of the Constitution...,” the petition said.