The Madras High Court on Thursday restrained the Committee of Privileges of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly from proceeding against 21 DMK legislators until September 14 and directed it to defer the deadline of September 12 fixed for the MLAs to reply to the show-cause notices issued to them on August 28.
Justice M. Duraiswamy passed the interim order after recording an undertaking given by Advocate General Vijay Narayan that he shall advise the committee not to pass any orders until next week when he would make his submissions questioning the maintainability of the writ petitions filed by the legislators.
The Advocate-General contended that the question of judicial review of the issue would not arise since all 21 MLAs, including the Leader of the Opposition M.K. Stalin, had “subjected themselves” to the privilege proceedings by writing identical letters to the chairman of the committee on September 5 seeking 15 days’ time to reply to the notices.
“Their request was accepted in part and additional time of seven days was granted. Therefore, on the face of it, these writ petitions are not maintainable. The petitioners are now trying to interdict a process which has already been set in motion. There cannot be judicial review of the action at this stage,” Mr. Narayan argued.
Earlier, Senior Counsel Kapil Sibal, representing Mr. Stalin, said that his case rested on four propositions. First was that the act of displaying gutkha sachets in the Assembly would not amount to breach of privilege since the government had banned only manufacture, storage, distribution, transportation and sale of gutkha and not its possession or consumption. When the judge wanted to know whether the term ‘storage’ would also not include possession, Mr. Sibal said that it would only mean storing the product for the purpose of sale or distribution. Secondly, the counsel claimed that the show-cause notices do not specify any rule or procedure or standing order which the MLAs had reportedly violated.
Invoking Article 194
Referring to Article 194 of the Constitution, he said that the right to freedom of speech of a legislator inside the Assembly was absolute and not subject to fetters such as defamation or contempt. “They are trying to indict me for exercising my absolute freedom without specifying which is the rule or standing order that I have violated,” Mr. Sibal added.
His third proposition was that even if there was a rule or standing order on the issue, still the act committed by the legislators could not be categorised as breach of privilege.
He contended that the legislators had displayed the gutkha sachets only in good faith to highlight easy availability of a product that was harmful to people.
Lastly, Mr. Sibal said, the timing of the notices would prove the mala fide intention of suspending the legislators and consequently preventing them from participating in the trust vote against the government.
Though the gutkha sachets were displayed in the Assembly on July 19, the show-cause notices had been issued only on August 28 after 19 AIADMK MLAs gave a letter to the Governor on August 22 expressing no confidence on Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami and Mr. Stalin placed a demand for a floor test on August 26, he pointed out.