A public interest litigation petition has been filed in the Madras High Court challenging Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Speaker’s November 7, 2006 order withdrawing the sanction, granted in 2005, to prosecute incumbent Chief Minister M.K. Stalin in the flyover construction scam case.
First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice J. Sathya Narayana Prasad on Thursday directed the litigant Manickam Athappa Gounder of Coimbatore to deposit ₹1 lakh in the court before April 26 to prove his bonafide intention behind filing the case.
When the judges wanted to know why an order passed in 2006 had been challenged after 18 years, the petitioner’s counsel said, the Speaker’s order was not available in the public domain all these years. Only recently, the petitioner came to know about it and hence the petition.
In his affidavit, the litigant said, the Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department (CB-CID) had registered a case against former Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, the incumbent Chief Minister and a few others on June 19, 2001 on the basis of a complaint lodged by the then Chennai Corporation Commissioner J.C.T. Acharyalu.
Touted as the flyover scam case, it was related to alleged corruption in construction in various flyovers in Chennai city at an outlay of ₹115.50 crore. The CB-CID completed the investigation and filed a charge sheet Karunanidhi, Mr. Stalin, incumbent Minister K. Ponmudi and former Minister Ko.Si. Mani in 2004.
On April 15, 2005, the then Speaker had accorded sanction for prosecution. However, after the DMK returned to power in the State in 2006, the person who succeeded to the post of Speaker withdrew the sanction since the CB-CID turned a volte face and decided to close the case by terming it as ‘a mistake of fact.’
Terming such withdrawal of sanction as arbitrary, the petitioner urged the court to quash the Speaker’s 2006 order and issue a consequential direction to the competent court to prosecute Mr. Stalin and Mr. Ponmudi for offences punishable under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 as well as the Indian Penal Code.
