HC rejects another plea against using public money to acquire Jayalalithaa’s residence

The Madras High Court on Thursday dismissed a second public interest litigation petition filed by activist ‘Traffic’ K.R. Ramaswamy to injunct the State government from acquiring former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s Poes Garden residence ‘Veda Nilayam’ using public money and converting it into a memorial.

Justices R. Subbiah and Krishnan Ramasamy rejected the plea after Advocate-General Vijay Narayan said that a petition with an identical relief by the same petitioner was dismissed by Justices Vineet Kothari and R. Suresh Kumar last month. He said that the bench had granted liberty to the petitioner to challenge an ordinance promulgated for the acquisition.

However, the petitioner’s counsel, G.K. Harihara Rajan, explained to the court that his client was unable to lay his hands on the ordinance despite best efforts taken by him to obtain a copy of it even under the Right to Information Act. Hence, he had preferred a sub-application urging the court to dispense with the production of the ordinance.

The lawyer also claimed that Jayalalithaa was a “convict” and hence public money should not be used to acquire her house and convert it into a memorial. Refusing to accept his explanation, the judges said that a second PIL petition could not be entertained for the same cause, especially when the first petition had been dismissed after due consideration.