CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has directed the state government to file a status report on the 41 FIRs registered by the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) regarding corruption in the liquor retail business of the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (Tasmac).
The direction was issued by a vacation bench of justices G R Swaminathan and V Lakshminarayanan when a PIL petition filed by K Venkatachalapathy @ Kutty, of Tirunelveli, came up for hearing on Thursday.
The bench adjourned the hearing by three weeks after getting an undertaking from Advocate General (AG) P S Raman that he would advise the home secretary “not to close the pending cases till next hearing”.
When the bench expressed apprehensions that the state may close the FIRs in order to render the PIL infructuous if adjourned, the AG said such closure cannot be done unilaterally by the state.
“It cannot be done unilaterally. The closure reports have to be filed in the jurisdictional judicial magistrate court and the magistrate has to apply his mind before ordering closure,” he pointed out.
The counsel for the petitioner had pressed for a status report on the FIRs registered since 2017.