The Madras High Court on Thursday reserved its judgement on a public interest litigation petition to declare illegal, a notification issued by the Union Home Ministry on May 10 nominating three MLAs to the Puducherry Legislative Assembly.
Justices Anita Sumanth and Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy deferred their verdict after hearing Solicitor General Tushar Mehta for the Union Home Ministry, advocate M. Gnanasekar for the PIL petitioner G.A. Jagaannathan and advocate V. Raghavachari for two of the nominated MLAs.
The petitioner’s counsel had contended that the credentials of the three individuals nominated by the Centre were questionable though the nominated MLAs should be men of eminence. He also questioned the hurry with which the nominations had been made even before the elected MLAs could be sworn in.
However, the Solicitor General brought it to the notice of the court that there was only one negative covenant in the law against the nomination of MLAs to the Puducherry Assembly and that covenant states that the nominee should not be a government servant.
Since none of the three nominees were government servants, there was no bar in nominating them to the Assembly, he said. Mr. Mehta also relied upon a few Supreme Court judgements and contended that the MLAs could be nominated even before the formation of the government in the union territory.
A lawyer, representing the third nominated MLA, accused the PIL petitioner of having tarnished his image by questioning his credentials and publicising it in the media. He said the court should not allow the litigant to raise such baseless issues.
