Gutkha Case: Madras HC quashes the privilege notice against MK Stalin and 18 other DMK MLAs

The Madras High Court on Tuesday quashed the privilege notice initiated against 19 MLAs, including DMK president M K Stalin, for waving gutka packets in the TamilNadu Assembly. However, the privilege committee is at liberty to reconsider the issue and allowed the privilege committee of the Tamil Nadu Assembly to issue a fresh notice against the MLAs.

On August 28, 2017, Opposition Leader MK Stalin and 18 other MLAs of the party faced privilege motion for having brought sachets of the contraband(Gutkha) into the Assembly to show how freely the tobacco product was available in the open market.

The privilege committee of the Assembly initiated the privilege proceedings and issued the show-cause notice to 21 MLAs, including M K Stalin. Challenging the motion, the 21 legislators had moved the Madras High Court. After which the Madras High Court had ordered for an interim stay on the proceedings against the DMK MLAs, on September 7, 2017.

The Government had moved the High Court later, pleading "The term of the legislators as well as the Tamil Nadu Assembly is going to expire soon, and an early date of hearing of the case must be allotted for bringing a logical conclusion," advocate-general Vijay Narayan said.

Recording the submission, the first bench of Chief Justice AP Sahi and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy agreed to exclusively hear the case on August 12, 2020.  However, the bench delinked four other pleas which included two pleas moved by Stalin challenging the trust vote held on February 18, 2017 and another one seeking to hold a fresh floor test which were part of the batch of petitions heard and posted them for hearing to September 22.

After hearing for nearly three days, the Madras High Court on Tuesday pronounced its orders on the plea moved by 19 DMK MLAs, including Opposition leader and DMK president MK Stalin, challenging a privilege notice against them for waving banned gutkha packets in the state Assembly.