Free bicycle issue: Foolproof evidence needed, says court

A division bench comprising Justice M Sathyanarayanan and Justice P Rajamanickam, before whom a plea moved by social activist Traffic Ramaswamy came up for hearing, wondered as to how the logo of a different state government had appeared on bicycles being distributed in Tamil Nadu.

Also, the bench on remarking as to how the government can afford to be so careless in such aspects, sought to know from Narmadha Sampath, Additional Advocate General as to how such aspects could transpire. However, the bench on pointing out that the petition moved is merely based on newspaper and visual media reports, said “the court cannot merely proceed on newspaper reports” and that “such an allegation ought to be backed with concrete proof based on documents.”

With the counsel appearing for the petitioner seeking time to produce additional documents to substantiate their case, the bench adjourned the case to be heard after four weeks. Ramaswamy in his petition had submitted that Law Minister CV Shanmugam had distributed free bicycles recently to students at a government school in Villupuram and all the cycles had logos of Karnataka government schemes.

He further noted that the media had reported that these bicycles were originally rejected by Karnataka government as they were found to be defective but the Tamil Nadu government had procured such faulty bicycles for distribution to students here thereby endangering the lives of students, he said.

Based on this, Ramaswamy sought the court to direct the State to immediately stop the distribution of those sub-standard cycles and initiate disciplinary action against those responsible forsuch illegality.