Madras High Court imposes Rs 10,000 as cost on petitioner

Chennai: Deprecating the practice of filing public interest litigations to gain publicity, the Madras high court has dismissed with costs of  Rs10,000, a PIL, which sought to declare as illegal, the transfer of disproportionate wealth case against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa from Tamil Nadu to Karnataka by the Supreme Court and the judgments of the trial court in Bengaluru and Karnataka high court.

Dismissing as not maintainable, the PIL filed by senior counsel P. R. Krishnan, a division bench comprising the Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice T. S. Sivagnanam said, “The petitioner, a senior counsel in our opinion ought to have great responsibility rather than filing this misconceived writ petition”.The court said the costs should be deposited with the Mediation and Conciliation Centre within 15 days.

The Bench said the petitioner had sought to come to the rescue of Jayalalithaa by claiming that as a citizen, he was entitled to file the PIL in respect of the correctness of the proceedings against Jayalalithaa. It was his case that the transfer of trial from Tamil Nadu to Karnataka was not in accordance with law, the trial judge was not fair, detention of Jayalalithaa in Karnataka jail was illegal. But no one came forward to question the legality of these acts. It was his case that the entire trial was null and void.

 “In our view firstly from the premise approaching this court is fallacious. Jayalalithaa is not devoid of ability to defend herself and did defend herself. The transfer of the case was in pursuance to the order of the Supreme Court.”

An appeal was filed in which Jayalalithaa succeeded on merits. Appeal may be preferred against this was a separate matter. “We are unequivocally of the view that there are the endeavours only to gain publicity, which is considered to be strongly deprecated and thus such a proceeding is complete waste of judicial time and must be nipped in the bud.”