Courts shouldn’t interfere in domain of Assembly Speaker on seating issue: HC

The Madras High Court on Thursday dismissed a public interest litigation which sought to treat the MLAs from other political parties, who had contested on election symbols of either the DMK or AIAIDMK in the recently concluded assembly elections, to be considered as members of the respective parties they had contested from and not as those belonging to their parent parties.

The first bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice PD Audikesavalu before whom the PIL came dismissed the same on the basis that it is the prerogative of the Speaker to treat MLAs in a particular manner and the courts should assiduously maintain the Lakshman Rekha drawn in this regard and not interfere into the affairs of the Assembly.

The court also held that the petitioner only cites an anomaly in seating arrangement and no illegality has been made out. The bench also pointed out that there exists no element of public interest in the petition nor there exists any scope to interfere in the matter. The petitioner M Loganathan, an advocate, had submitted that as many as eight MLAs from different parties had contested under the ‘rising sun’ symbol of DMK and one person from Puratchi Bharatham had contested on the AIADMK symbol. The plea claimed that such MLAs should not be given separate seating arrangements and time slots and should be considered as part of either the ruling party or the opposition as the case may be. He also submitted that by virtue of winning through the symbol of another party they are bound by the whip of the said party.

The plea cited MLAs ER Easwaran, MH Jawahirullah, K Chinappa, M Boominathan, T Velmurugan, P Abdul Samad, T Sadhan Tirumalai Kumar and ARR Raghuraman as not belonging to DMK, but had contested in the ‘rising sun’ symbol while M Jagan Murthy of Puratchi Bharatham had contested in AIADMK’s two leaves symbol.