The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Apex court moved for stay of Presidential notification

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 20, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Apex court moved for stay of Presidential notification

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI, JULY 19. A Chennai-based lawyer today moved the Supreme Court seeking a stay of the July 6 Presidential notification for the establishment and inauguration of a Bench of the Madras High Court in Madurai slated for July 24.

The special leave petition filed by V. Subramanian, challenging a July 16 High Court order declining to grant relief, is likely to be `mentioned' tomorrow for early listing.

The Chennai lawyers have declared July 24 a `black day' and have suspended work seeking postponement of the inauguration on the question of allocation of districts for the Bench.

Mr. Subramanian submitted that the High Court while rejecting the prayer for interim stay of the inauguration failed to appreciate the basic requirement of constitutional provisions for establishing a permanent Bench. Records would clearly show that the High Court had given the go-by to the legal requirements — that the establishment of a High Court Bench was governed by Article 214 of the Constitution and that the provisions of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, under which the President had issued the notification for the Bench, would not apply to the Madras High Court as Tamil Nadu was not a State within the meaning of `new State' as defined under the 1956 Act.

Even a Circuit Bench, under Clause 31 of the Letters Patent, could not be made with the consent of the Governor because after the 15th and 16th constitutional amendments, establishment of a High Court and administration of justice were removed from the State List and brought under the Concurrent List, which excludes administration of justice, the High Court and the Supreme Court from the purview of the State, he said.

Mr. Subramanian said his main concern was not whether a Bench should be established in Madurai or not, but it could not be set up without following certain basic constitutional and legal provisions, without which it could not be established legally.

He drew the apex court's attention to a private member's Bill, introduced last year, seeking establishment of a Bench of the Madras High Court in Pondicherry. While so, there was no reason why such a source of power should not be followed for establishing a permanent Bench in Madurai, within Tamil Nadu.

The petitioner assailed the President's notification stating, "it is a clear case of Constitutional blunder." Invoking Section 51(2) of the States Reorganisation Act when the Act would not apply was highly illegal, he said. The High Court failed to consider all these aspects while rejecting his plea, the petitioner said.

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