CHENNAI: Describing the single judge’s order restoring status quo ante as on June 23 in the affairs of the AIADMK as “extraordinary” because it was beyond the prayer, party leader Edappadi K Palaniswami has urged a division bench of the Madras High Court to overturn the order.
The division bench reserved its orders on the appeals filed by Palaniswami after both sides wound up the arguments on Thursday. The counsels of both sides were directed to file written submissions by Friday.
Representing Palaniswami before the division bench of Justices M Duraiswamy and Sunder Mohan, senior advocate CS Vaidyanathan said, “It was not even the prayer (of Panneerselvam) for status quo, yet the court ordered for it. It’s rather extraordinary. The order suffers from error in approach.”
Saying the plaintiff (Panneerselvam) had a “suspect motive” in filing the suit against the July 11 General Council (GC) meeting, in which Palaniswami was elected interim general secretary, the counsel accused him of acting in “personal avarice” to further his interests and not representing the interests of 1.50 crore party members.
Aryama Sundaram, another senior advocate, said the single judge approached the matter by applying “company law principles”. Referring to the nullification of the July 11 GC meeting, he said the GC cannot be put in “deactivated mode” since the coordinator and joint coordinator have problems.
Vaidyanathan, Sundaram and Vijay Narayan, all appearing for Palaniswami, stressed that the GC is the supreme body, which is representative in nature, and whose decisions are “final and binding” on all party members. They said sufficient time was given before holding the July 11 GC meeting and party rules were not flouted.
However, senior counsels Guru Krishnakumar, PH Arvindh Pandian and AK Sriram, representing Panneerselvam and GC member P Vairamuthu, said there was no vacancy for the coordinator and joint coordinator posts caused through suspension but an impression was created as though there are vacancies.
They pointed out that party bylaw affirms that the general secretary shall be elected by primary members, and the bylaw was particularly made by party founder MG Ramachandran (MGR) and cannot be altered.
Panneerselvam’s counsels emphasised that the bylaws were not followed in convening the GC meeting that was struck down by the order of the single judge. Calling the defence of Palaniswami a “sham”, Krishnakumar reiterated that the election of coordinator and joint coordinator need not be ratified by the GC.
All cases regarding attack, looting at party HQ transferred to CB-CID
The TN government on Thursday informed the HC that all four cases registered by the Royapettah police regarding the attack and looting of documents from the AIADMK headquarters have been transferred to the CB-CID. Additional public prosecutor E Raj Thilak made the submission in court when a petition by AIADMK MP CVe Shanmugam seeking a CBI inquiry into the looting of documents came up for hearing. Recording the submission, the judge directed the Royapettah police to hand over the case documents to the CB-CID, and posted the matter to Sept 19