CHENNAI: The first bench of the Madras High Court on Tuesday set aside the breach of motion proceedings by the assembly committee initiated against 21 DMK MLAs including MK Stalin for waving gutka packets in the Tamil Nadu assembly in 2017. 

The first bench comprising Chief Justice AP Sahi and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy passed the order by granting liberty to the privilege committee to initiate proceedings if it still feels that the act amounts to a breach of privilege.

The bench partly allowed the petitions moved by the legislators and disposed of the plea. 

The bench also said that there are some foundational errors in the entire breach of privilege proceedings initiated by the assembly committee. 

A detailed order on the plea is awaited from the division bench of the Madras High Court. 

On August 28, 2017, the assembly privilege committee of the house initiated the privilege proceedings by issuing show-cause notices to Stalin and 20 MLAs for waving gutkha packets on July 19, 2017. 

On September 7, 2017, the high court passed an interim order and stayed further proceedings in the issue against the DMK MLAs. 

The division bench recommenced the hearings after the advocate-general Vijay Narayan and government pleader V Jayaprakash Narayan mentioned before the first bench that the MLAs are enjoying an interim order granted by the court staying further proceedings in the privilege motion for over three years now. 

Senior advocates N R Elango and Shanmugasundaram representing the DMK MLAs submitted that they will be engaging counsels from Delhi and assured the court that they would not seek any more adjournment.

Recording the submission, the bench fixed the date of hearing as August 12. 

The court had held a hearing of both the counsels for three continuous days.