Disgusted and dejected Judge of the Madras High Court was left with no other alternative but to rebuke politicians belonging to both the AIADMK and the DMK for their “politics of hate”. Justice N Kirubakaran of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court was so annoyed with the two major parties in the State for filing cases even over frivolous issues.
The Judge was listening to arguments by lawyers representing the parties in a petition filed by an AIADMK worker against MK Stalin, the heir-apparent and the de facto chief of the DMK, seeking to register a criminal case against the latter for having used the PWD guesthouse at Kanyakumari for 20 minutes during the lok Sabha election campaign on March 14.
The petitioner’s contention was that Stalin had used the Guest House for holding discussions with leaders of the DMK. A former DMK Minister was present in the meeting which was attended among others by many local leaders of the party. According to the petitioner, Stalin violated the directives of the Election Commission that Government facilities should not be used by politicians for political activities during election campaign when the Code of Conduct is in place
The lawyer, representing Stalin argued that the DMK leader was present in the Guest House for only 20 minutes. The judge expressed surprise that what kind of political activity could have happened in a span of 20 minutes. He even opined that that the DMK leader would have gone to the Guest House to use the rest room.
“The filing of this case will not serve any purpose except publicity,” the Judge told the lawyer of the
petitioner. This prompted Veera Kathiravan, counsel for Stalin to intervene and said that the petition had been filed with a mala fide intention. But the Judge Kirubakaran was not amused. “You are no different from them. You also do the same thing when you are in power. Only in Tamil Nadu we have such bad political cultures. It is not so in north ,” said the Judge. He later reserved the case for orders.
The kind of politics practised in Tamil Nadu could be understood by a PIl filed by a lawyer in the Madras High Court pleading for restraining the Union Government from selling two Offshore Patrol Vessels to Sri lanka. These OPVs, used for surveillance and rescue operations in the Indian Ocean are to be built by the Goa Shipyard limited.
The Court has asked the respondents concerned (read Union of India) to find out from the PMO whether the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu was informed about the deal for supplying the vessels to Sri lanka. “This is ridiculous. Why the Union Government should inform Tamil Nadu Chief Minister about a commercial deal with another country,” asked a senior lawyer in MHC.