With vengeance and political sting, the AIADMK on Thursday filed a contempt petition before the Supreme Court seeking adequate punishment against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Karunanidhi, Union minister T R Baalu, state minister K N Nehru and 3 state top bureaucrats for disobeying September 30 order banning bundh in the state.

Filing the petition, the party said: “Punish the contemnors for not only committing contempt of the order of the apex court but also for giving inflammatory and contumacious  speeches”.

The petition filed by advocate Subramonium Prasad urged the court also to initiate contempt proceedings against Chief Secretary L K Tripathy, Director General of Police P Rajendran and Transport Secretary Debendranath Sarangi for alleged deliberate and willful violation of the court order; and closing the public transport, market, schools and colleges etc.

“Members of the DMK made various inflammatory and contumacious speeches. The tone of the speeches was to defy the order of the apex court,” said the petition which was filed this evening.

Citing evidence, the petition said only 61 of the 18,641 buses of the state road transport department plied on the roads and earned few lakhs of rupees against daily average earning of Rs 10.43 crore.

The offices, schools, colleges were closed putting the common people in hardship, said the AIADMK adding that the public exchequer had a loss of crores of rupees in sales tax and toll tax.

Even milk supply and daily vegetable supply to various areas were affected. The cinema halls were also closed. On Monday, the court had directed the petitioner to file a contempt petition with evidence if the order of the court was not carried in letter and spirit.

When the counsel appearing for the AIADMK submitted on Monday that the DMK-led government in the southern state had flouted the order, a bench of Justice B N Agrawal and P Sathasivam said: “File a contempt petition if they are not obeying order, we will recommend the Centre for presidential rule in the state provided you make out a case.”

In an extraordinary sitting on a Sunday due to urgency of the matter, the court had banned the strike (bundh) proposed by the Tamil Nadu government for demanding early completion of the Sethusamudram shipping canal project between India and Sri Lanka.

The court had declared the proposed bundh “unconstitutional and violative of the apex court’s directive on the issue.”

The bench had said the apex court in 1998 clearly upheld the ruling of a full bench of the Kerala High Court that “calling or enforcing a bund was illegal and unconstitutional”.