CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has questioned the Election Commission of India on how it can take away the powers of the court provided under Article 226 of the Constitution regarding writ jurisdiction in respect of the appeals against the orders of the chief electoral officer on pre-certification of the poll advertisements.
The first bench of Chief Justice SV Gangapurwala and Justice J Sathya Narayana Prasad raised the query when the petitions filed by the DMK challenging the orders of Tamil Nadu CEO denying permission to the party’s poll advertisements and questioning the legality of clause 3.8 of the rules governing certification of the advertisements, which says appeals against the CEO’s orders be filed only before the Supreme Court.
Senior advocate R Shanmugasundaram, appearing for the petitioner, questioned the rationale behind the ECI’s submission that the rule was based on the Supreme Court order passed on April 13, 2004.
“It was an interim order and it is confined only to the particular case. Final order could have been passed, but a copy of it is not available on the website of SC. The ECI cannot say its rule is based on such an interim order,” he told the bench.
Advocate Niranjan Rajagopalan, representing the ECI, said the order of the Supreme Court has been extended time and again and is in operation in the ongoing polls too, and the rule on appeal is based on it. When the bench asked him to produce the copy of the final order, he said it is not available.
Referring to the submission that the appeal against CEO order can be made only before the Supreme Court, the bench said, “You (ECI) cannot double up with Article 226 of the Constitution which provides the powers (of writ jurisdiction) to the high court.”
It directed the ECI counsel to produce the SC’s final order copy on Thursday and adjourned the matter to the same date for further hearing.