Justice Sathyanarayanan to decide AIADMK MLAs' fate

The Supreme Court on Wednesday appointed Justice M Sathyanarayanan of the Madras High Court as a third judge to decide the fate of 18 disqualified MLAs of AIADMK.

A vacation bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Sanjay Kishan Kaul refused to transfer the matter to the apex court.

A split verdict by the high court's division bench on June 14 put a status quo on their status, raising the need to refer the matter to a third judge.

The court replaced the third judge Justice S Vimala, earlier nominated by the high court to hear the matter, by appointing Justice Sathyanarayanan.

But it took a strong exception to the “casual remarks” made against the woman judge, Justice Vimala, who was to adjudicate upon the MLAs' plea against their disqualification for showing their allegiance to T T V Dinkaran.

Senior advocate Vikas Singh and advocate Amit Anand Tiwari, representing the petitioner MLAs, agreed to withdraw the remarks in their petition against the judge.

The court ordered to expunge the observations relating to Justice Vimala and disposed of the matter.

During the hearing, the bench also pointed out that it was not correct on the part of the MLAs to claim the judgement by the division bench of the high court after six months of reserving it.

The MLAs had earlier claimed that many people had got to know through WhatsApp messages about the third judge who will be hearing the case after the split verdict, even before her name was declared.

Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker P Dhanapal had on September 18 last year disqualified the 18 MLAs owing allegiance to side-lined party leader T T V Dhinakaran on the ground that they had tried to pull down the AIADMK government.