Tamil Nadu: Five pleas against former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s portrait

CHENNAI: The First Bench of the Madras High Court on Monday dismissed  five PIL petitions from the DMK and others, which challenged the display of former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s portrait in the State Assembly, for the ‘default’ of the respective counsel.The Bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice A Selvam, however, agreed to take up the matter again, when the counsel made a representation before it after lunch hour.

The PILs were filed by DMK MLA J Anbazhagan, advocate S Duraisamy, PMK advocate K Balu, activist ‘Traffic’ K R Ramaswamy and one C Kumaran. When the matters came up in the morning, none of the counsels for the petitioners were present in the court. The Bench then dismissed them as ‘default’.

The PIL from Anbazhagan sought to quash a government order, which did not prohibit display of portraits and photographs of the AIADMK leader, who had been found guilty of corruption charges by a court of law and convicted. All five PILs were dismissed when they came up in the morning for default of the counsel. The court, however, in the afternoon agreed to take them up and restore the cases.