Court kayoes all legal impediments

The Madras High Court on Monday removed all impediments standing in the way of the  Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant.

The first bench of Acting Chief Justice RK Agrawal and Justice M Sathiyanarayanan  rejected writ pleas to declare the clearance granted by the Atomic Energy Regulation Board (AERB), dated May 11 last as null and void and refused to direct the authorities concerned to comply with the directions issued by the Supreme Court in an order dated May 6.

However, the bench directed the State government to act in accordance with direction No 14 of the Supreme Court relating to withdrawal of the cases registered against the agitators opposed to KKNPP.

The bench was dismissing two public interest writ petitions from engineer G Sundararajan and another from advocate P Pugalenthi, on Monday.

Accepting the arguments of Additional Solicitor General P Wilson and Advocate-General AL Somayaji, the bench pointed out that a perusal of the documents filed by the authorities concerned disclosed that the pre-operational direction issued by the SC had been complied with. The compliance reports had also been sent to the SC. Hence, the contention of the petitioner that the copies of the reports had not been furnished to him lacked merit, because no direction had been given by the apex court to supply the reports to the petitioner.

With regard to the contention that SC directives had not been fully complied with in letter and spirit, the bench observed that it was always open to the petitioner to move the Supreme Court by filing appropriate applications taking to the knowledge of the SC about non-compliance of the said directions and also for getting copies of compliance reports.

A perusal of the grounds raised in these writ petitions disclosed that the petitioner wanted to re-agitate on the issue, which had attained finality before the SC.

“In the considered opinion of this court, it is impermissible and this court cannot interpret the orders passed by the SC and the options available to the petitioner for redressal of his grievance are not foreclosed. In the light of the reasons assigned above, this court is of the view that the prayers sought for by the writ petitioner cannot be granted. In the result, these writ petitions are dismissed,” the bench said.