The Madras High Court on Friday dismissed a contempt of court petition filed by Municipal Administration and Rural Development Minister S.P. Velumani against non-governmental organisation Arappor Iyakkam, its convener Jayaram Venkatesan, joint convener Jahir Hussain and treasurer P. Nakeeran for continuously accusing the Minister of corruption on their social media accounts despite an interim order passed by the court on February 17.
First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy came down heavily on the Minister for having filed the contempt petition despite the February 17 court order not having gagged anyone from speaking about allegations of corruption. The judges said it was a “frivolous contempt petition that needs to be thrown away” and that it was nothing but an abuse of the process of the court.
The judges also initially dictated orders imposing a token cost of ₹10 on the Minister for having filed such a petition. However, when petitioner’s counsel requested not to impose such costs since the contempt petition had been filed on the basis of a misunderstanding of the court order and not because of any malice, the judges accepted his request and ordered that no such costs need to be paid.
It was while passing interim orders on a case filed by Arappor Iyakkam, through its counsel V. Suresh, for registration of a corruption case against the Minister, that the court had observed that mere pendency of the case “should not be regarded as any adverse inference being drawn against the Minister concerned.” The Minister claimed that the NGO was continuing to make allegations despite such “explicit direction” by the court.
