The Madras High Court on Thursday directed the State government to file its counter affidavit to a writ petition filed by former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s nephew J. Deepak challenging the validity of Tamil Nadu Puratchi Thalaivi Dr. J. Jayalalithaa Memorial Foundation Act of 2020, enacted for converting her residence, ‘Veda Nilayam’, into a memorial.
Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy agreed with Advocate-General Vijay Narayan that the petitioner may not have, prima facie, made out strong grounds for declaring the law invalid. However, they questioned as to how many memorials the government would keep establishing by acquiring private buildings and occupying public spaces.
Referring to the mausoleums established for former Chief Ministers C.N. Annadurai, [M.G. Ramachandran], Jayalalithaa and M. Karunanidhi at the Marina beach in Chennai, the Chief Justice asked: “Have you already exhausted Marina?” In reply, the A-G informed the court that only a small portion of the beach had been utilised for mausoleums.
He also told the court that there was a practice world over to convert the residences of great leaders into memorials. The Tamil Nadu government itself maintains about 17 such memorials for political leaders and those who had made significant achievements in varied fields, he told the court and highlighted the achievements of Jayalalithaa.
“We do not mean disrespect to anyone,” the Chief Justice clarified and said that the rate at which the government had been establishing memorials would someday lead to a situation when memorials might be established even for Deputy Chief Ministers and so on. He pointed out that there is no memorial for Winston Churchill.
Stating that there were many judges who had made stellar contributions, the Chief Justice said there may not be any space left in the court complex if their statues were erected all over. Further, referring to the number of portraits that had been hung all over the court buildings, he said there would hardly be any space for any more portraits after a few years.
Later, the judges asked senior counsel AR.L. Sundaresan and advocate S.L. Sudarsanam, representing Mr. Deepak, to first pursue a writ petition which he had filed before a single judge of the High Court challenging the acquisition proceedings. in his capacity as the legal heir of Jayalalithaa and ensure that the case gets disposed of at the earliest.
The present writ petition challenging the Act could be taken up after that, they said and adjourned it by six weeks.
