The Madras High Court on Friday condoned the delay of 62 days on the part of Puducherry Lieutenant Governor in filing a writ appeal against a single judge’s verdict which held that the L-G could not interfere with the day-to-day administration of the Union Territory when an elected government was in place, since it would amount to running a parallel government.
A Division Bench of Justices Vineet Kothari and C.V. Karthikeyan condoned the delay that had arisen primarily due to the L-G moving an appeal directly before the Supreme Court which recently refused to entertain the case and asked the appellant to first exhaust the alternative remedy of filing a writ appeal before the Division Bench of the High Court.
The present appeal had been preferred against Justice R. Mahadevan’s judgment delivered on April 30.
Allowing a writ petition by Congress MLA K. Lakshminarayanan in 2017, the judge said, “the central government as well as the Administrator (the term used in the Constitution to refer to the L-G) should be true to the concept of democratic principles. “Otherwise, the constitutional scheme of the country of being democratic and republic would be defeated.” He also made it clear that secretaries to the government were bound to take instructions from the ministers concerned and the council of ministers headed by the Chief Minister besides reporting to them on official matters.
“The Secretaries are not empowered to issue orders on their own or upon the instructions of the Administrator,” he added. He disapproved the alleged practice of officials being part of social media groups through which the L-G was issuing instructions for redressal of grievances and reminded them that as per rules, they were bound to use only authorised mediums when it came to issues related to administration of the Union Territory.