The Madras High Court on Wednesday imposed a fine of ₹20,000 on advocate B. Ramkumar Adityan of Thoothukudi for filing a series of frivolous cases in the guise of public interest litigation petitions and directed him to deposit the money in Chief Minister’s Public Relief Fund.
Justices Vineet Kothari and Pushpa Sathyanarayana passed the order while dismissing a latest case filed by the advocate seeking a direction to the State government and Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) to develop a mobile application and website for selling liquor.
When the case was listed for admission, Additional Advocate General S.R. Rajagopal said, the litigant was in the habit of filing series of cases on same subjects. He said, another Division Bench led by Justice M. Sathyanarayanan had recently imposed a cost of Rs.10,000 on him.
That order was passed because he had filed a second PIL petition for waiver of interest on bank loans during the moratorium period after having withdrawn his first petition because the court was not inclined to interfere with decisions having financial implications.
Similarly, on the issue of liquor shops too he had already filed a PIL petition which was heard along with a batch and orders were passed on May 8 to close all the shops and introduce online sale of liquor. Yet, he had come up with the present case for developing mobile apps, the AAG said.
After recording his submissions, the Bench said: “In order to effectively dissuade the petitioner from filing such kind of petitions unnecessarily, we are constrained to impose a cost of Rs.20,000 which we direct him to deposit in CM Public Relief Fund within one week.
“The proof of such deposit shall be placed on record with reference to this writ petition. We expect the petitioner to observe a sense of professionalism while espousing the public cause in the public interest litigations in future.”
