The Madras High Court on Tuesday rejected a plea by V.K. Sasikala, a close aide of former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa till the latter’s death, to declare that she continues to be the AIADMK’s interim general secretary ever since her appointment to the post on December 29, 2016.
A Division Bench of Justices R. Subramanian and N. Senthilkumar dismissed three appeal suits as well as a civil revision petition filed by her last year urging the High Court to set aside the orders passed by an Additional City Civil Court in Chennai, which had on April 11, 2022 rejected her plaint seeking such a declaration.
“These appeals and the revision symbolise the power tussle in one of the major political parties in Tamil Nadu. The AIADMK was founded by Dr. M.G. Ramachandran, a star of yesteryears, in 1972,” began the verdict penned by the senior judge in the Division Bench. The verdict went on to list various developments that took place in the party since its inception and pointed out that there was a rift in the party pursuant to the resignation of O. Panneerselvam (currently expelled from the party) from the post of Chief Minister on February 7, 2017.
A week later, Ms. Sasikala was convicted in a disproportionate assets case.
The party’s incumbent general secretary, Edappadi K. Palaniswami, was appointed as the Chief Minister before she was imprisoned.
Thereafter, the party’s general council, which had appointed her as interim general secretary in December 2016, met in September 2017 and resolved to rescind her appointment to the post of interim general secretary.
The general council also appointed Mr. Panneerselvam and Mr. Palaniswami as the Coordinator and Joint Coordinator of the party respectively. Immediately, Ms. Sasikala filed a civil suit contending that the convening of the September 12, 2017 general council was illegal as it was not in accordance with party by-laws.
However, the Bench led by Justice Subramanian concurred with Senior Counsel Vijay Narayan, representing the AIADMK, and P.H. Arvind Pandian, representing Mr. Panneerselvam, that most of the prayers sought by Ms. Sasikala in her 2017 suit had become redundant/infructuous due to passage of time.
“It may be open to the second plaintiff (Ms. Sasikala) to file a suit afresh, but that cannot be a consideration for deciding whether this plaint should remain on the file or not. We will have to necessarily conclude that the suit, as it stands today, cannot be retained on the file,” the Bench concluded.
