Third plea over Jayalalithaa’s death to be taken up on January 9
Another plea raising suspicion over the death of former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa has been moved at the Madras High Court taking the number of pleas moved so far to three.
By : migrator
Update: 2017-01-04 19:10 GMT
Chennai
The present plea moved by an AIADMK member S Gnanasekaran from Nagapattinam has sought for a direction to the Union government to appoint a committee consisting of medical experts associated with Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to enquire into the former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s death by seizing the records relating to the treatment, drugs administered, therapy performed and the various lifesaving equipment’s used during her ailment for the past two years and post treatment given by Apollo Hospital and ascertain the exact cause of her death.
The plea also sought for a direction to All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Apollo Hospitals to produce all medical records relating to the treatment provided to Jayalalithaa from September 22 to December 5 in a sealed cover before the High Court pending disposal of the petition.
The first bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M Sundar on observing as to how many petitions will be filed on the same issue tagged it with the other two such pleas and posted them for hearing to January 9. It may be noted that another plea moved by an AIADMK worker PA Joseph seeking a probe by an inquiry commission or a fact-finding committee had prompted a vacation bench comprising Justice S Vaidyanathan and V Parthiban to say that it might even order the exhumation of Jayalalithaa’s body as the public ought to know what happened.
“After the demise, everybody has a right to question. I personally have a doubt. One day it was told that she is walking, another day it was said that she will come out and suddenly what happened. Even about the health of late Chief Minister MGR, video was released,” Justice Vaidyanathan had said. The PIL which had listed the sequence of events since Jayalalithaa’s admission to the Apollo Hospital had claimed that the secrecy preceding her death gave rise to doubts in people’s mind.
The PIL had sought a commission comprising retired Supreme Court judges to consider the highly questionable incidents including Jayalalithaa’s hospitalisation, reported recovery and the cardiac arrest resulting in her death. Another petition moved by social activist Traffic Ramaswamy sought for the creating of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) comprising CBI and IB personnel to go into the details of Jayalalithaa’s death.
Plea seeking quota for SC/ST in local bodies dismissed
Holding that there is no shred of discussion about providing reservation for the offices of Vice-President and Vice-Chairmen in the local bodies in the Constitution, the Madras High Court on Wednesday dismissed a batch of PILs seeking to provide proportionate reservation to various posts in local bodies.
The First Bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M Sundar which dismissed the PIL’s including the one moved by VCK leader Thirumavalavan, said “The plain language of the relevant provisions of the Constitution are clear and unambiguous, not warranting invocation of any reading into the principle.” The bench in its order also held that as the vice-president/vice-chairman are elected from amongst the elected (unlike president/chairman who are directly elected by the citizenry) and as reservation proportionate to the SC, ST population had already been provided for the elected, it would lead to a double reservation resulting in asymmetry. Also, the bench said “There is no mention about reservation for vice-presidents and vice-chairmen in the debates in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha as well as the report of the Joint Committee.”
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