PIL seeks protection for whistleblowers

Chennai: A public interest litigation has been filed in the Madras high court to direct the authorities to provide protection to whistleblowers C.K. Mathivanan and his colleagues, victimised for exposing the Rs 440 crore BSNL scam, allegedly involving former Union minister Dayanidhi Maran.

A division bench, comprising justices S.K. Agnihotri and K.K. Sasidharan, before whom the PIL filed by advocate N. Rajaraman and social activist ‘Traffic’ Ramaswamy came up for hearing, ordered notice returnable by two weeks to BSNL, department of telecommunication, New Delhi, CBI and the state home secretary.

According to the petitioners, in June 2011, they came across a news report relating to the dharna held by BSNL employees, led by Mathivanan, against the alleged misuse of 323 telephone lines with high-speed optic cable network by the then telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran for Sun Network owned by his brother Kalanidhi Maran.

The phone lines were taken in the name of the general manager, telecom, Chennai circle, but allegedly used for Sun Network, causing a loss of Rs 440 crore to the public exchequer. Therefore, ‘Traffic’ Ramaswamy took the matter to the HC and Supreme Court and after his efforts, the CBI filed an FIR last year. At the time, he came to know that Mathivanan, retired, and his colleagues were being victimised because of their role.

Rajaraman and Ajay Mandyal approached the apex court for giving protection to whistleblowers in the absence of a statutory and institutional framework and Rajaraman was permitted to approach the HC with specific cases of assault on whistleblowers for protection.

As newspaper reports said Mathivanan was facing a lot of difficulties with regard to his pension and service benefits and 76 union members were also subjected to disciplinary proceedings, they had sent representations to various authorities to no avail. Hence, the present PIL, they added.