A Division Bench of the Madras High Court on Wednesday reserved its judgement on a batch of civil appeals preferred by former Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam and three of his supporters, against a single judge’s March 28 refusal to interfere with their expulsion from the AIADMK, as well as on a few other resolutions passed by the party’s general council on July 11, 2022.
The third Division Bench of Justices R. Mahadevan and Mohammed Shaffiq deferred its verdict on the appeals after the submission of written arguments on behalf of Senior Counsel Guru Krishnakumar, C. Manishankar, A.K. Sriram and Abdul Saleem representing the appellants and Senior Counsel C.S. Vaidyanathan and Vijay Narayan representing the AIADMK and its general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami.
The appeals were filed against the orders passed by Justice K. Kumaresh Babu who had held that the party’s July 11 general council resolutions, which abolished the posts of coordinator and joint coordinator, revived the post of general secretary to be elected by primary members and appointed Mr. Palaniswami as interim general secretary till the conduct of the elections, were prima facie valid, and do not call for interference.
The single judge had also refused to interfere with the notification issued by the party on March 17 for the conduct of the elections and had paved the way for Mr. Palaniswami to be declared elected as the general secretary immediately after he pronounced orders on March 28. The judge had also refused to interfere with the expulsion of Mr. Panneerselvam, P.H. Manoj Pandian, R. Vaithilingam and J.C.D. Prabhakar from the party.
Justice Babu had prima facie found an infraction of the party bylaws with respect to a special resolution through which the four leaders had been expelled from the primary membership of the party without any notice. Yet, he refused to interfere with the special resolution by stating that the balance of convenience was in favour of the party which feared that their inclusion might be detrimental to its interests.
