Pondy standoff reaches Madras High Court

Chennai: The standoff between the Lt Governor Puducherry and the Union Territory legislature reached the corridors of the Madras High court. G. Theva Neethi Dhas, Secretary to the Lt. Governor, has approached the High Court to quash a show cause notice dated April 5 by the Assembly Secretary asking why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against him.

When the petition came up for hearing before Justice M.Duraiswamy, the Judge ordered notice to the authorities and adjourned the matter to June 8. In the petition, Theva Neethi Dhas submitted that by an order dated March 30, the Puducherry chief secretary had transferred R.Chandrasekaran, the Commissioner of Puducherry Municipality. He was replaced by S. Ganessin. The order was allegedly issued at the instance of the Speaker during the absence of the Lt. Governor, Kiran Bedi, who was on an official tour.  However, the Lt. Governor refused to acknowledge the validity of the order.

 Dhas said he passed all the communications of the Lieutenant Governor pertaining to the issue to the Chief Secretary. As the directions were communicated by him on behalf of the Lt. Governor, the Speaker treated the communications as disobedience of his order.  On April 3, the Assembly Privileges Committee summoned him to show cause why he should not be punished for contempt of the House by abetting Chandrasekaran to function as the Municipal Commissioner against the order of the Speaker. Challenging the notice, the petitioner has approached the court seeking to stay further proceedings pursuant to the notice and to quash the same.