Madrash High Court's Big Order On Party Flagpoles In Public Spaces In Tamil Nadu
The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has ordered the maintenance of status quo on the removal of political flagpoles from public spaces, in a major relief to political parties, caste and community organisations across Tamil Nadu.
The decision comes as part of an appeal filed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) challenging a previous directive that mandated the removal of all political flagpoles from public areas.
The issue was taken up by a three-judge bench comprising Justices SM Subramaniam, Vijayakumar, and Soundar. The CPI(M), through its state secretary Shanmugam, argued that flagpoles had been set up across Tamil Nadu for over six decades as part of the party's outreach to the people and to symbolically represent its ideology.
The party claimed that local officials were removing flagpoles across districts, in some cases without any prior notice, which they argued was a violation of their rights.
The court acknowledged that the previous order was issued without hearing the views of political parties, which formed the crux of the argument. The judges questioned the government on its stance, even asking whether only flagpoles were obstructions while statues in public spaces were not.
The Bench has now invited political parties and organisations wishing to intervene in the matter to file impleading petitions by August 5, beyond which no further petitions would be accepted.
The Tamil Nadu government has also been directed to issue public notices in two Tamil and two English newspapers by July 25 informing stakeholders of the opportunity to participate.
Until then, the court ordered that no further flagpole removals should be carried out, and adjourned the matter to August 6 for further hearing.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Wire
an hour ago
- The Wire
Bihar SIR ‘Exercise in Exclusion', Says Opposition INDIA Bloc
Politics Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, the opposition said that the EC must abandon its 'institutional arrogance' and roll back the SIR. New Delhi: The opposition INDIA bloc on Sunday (July 27) called the Election Commission (EC)'s ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar an 'exercise in exclusion', demanding that the poll body give up its 'institutional arrogance' and stop the exercise. 'This is an exercise in exclusion. In the whole month, you could not find a single person who had to be included? There are different categories of exclusion, but it is highly surprising that they did not come across a single person who is eligible for inclusion,' said Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya while addressing a press conference in New Delhi. 'Between the summary revision which was conducted in January 2025 and July 2025 SIR, are we to believe that 22 lakh people have died in the last six months?' According to the EC's figures released on Sunday, a total of 65 lakh people have been found to be deceased, permanently shifted or not found, and another seven lakh were found to have registered in multiple places. The commission said that 7.24 crore enumeration forms have been collected at the end of its month-long exercise, which amounts to 91.69% of the total electors in the state. The press conference was addressed by Bhattacharya, Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Kumar Jha, Congress MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi and the Communist Party of India (Marxist)'s Nilotpal Basu. Singhvi questioned the 'institutional arrogance' of the EC and asked why the exercise could not be de-linked from the assembly elections due to be held in November. 'Please rethink your institutional arrogance. Everyone across the country is urging you to roll this back. What was the hurry to conduct this exercise just three months before the elections and link it to the elections? Why could this not be done after the elections? Many mistakes are being made because of this time limit,' he said. Singhvi said that amid questions being raised that the exercise was not one for the purification of electoral rolls but a citizenship verification drive, the EC has now made its stated objective clear. 'Earlier it was not clear, but now it is absolutely clear that this is a citizenship verification exercise by the EC. The Supreme Court's suggestion is as good as an order. If one is to accept the EC's argument that Aadhaar, ration card and EPIC card cannot be accepted, then that only means you want a proof of citizenship. That means your stated objective is to determine citizenship,' he said. Earlier this week, the EC in its affidavit in the Supreme Court said it has the authority to seek proof of citizenship and also turned down the court's suggestion that Aadhaar, voter identity and ration cards be considered as valid documents in its controversial exercise, which has been criticised for its risk of mass disenfranchisement and exclusion. 'Because you have said citizenship cannot be determined by ration card, voter ID card or Aadhaar card. So the question arises, has this right been given to the EC?' said Singhvi. Jha said that the exercise was started without consulting political parties, while 'opacity had become a hallmark' of the EC's functioning. 'When the chief election commissioner [Gyanesh Kumar] took over, he had said emphatically that none of his decisions would be taken without consulting political parties. I think in the last 22 years, there has been no bigger decision than this, but no political party was consulted. On June 24 the exercise was announced and on June 25 it was started," he said. Jha said that reports had shown booth-level officers filling out forms or sitting at a party office and signing forms, as well as instances of forms not being filled duly. 'This is a form of constitutional fraud. If my form can be filled without my sign or fingerprint and submitted, and on the basis of this you call it a cleaning exercise, then sorry to say, opacity has become a hallmark of the functioning of the EC,' he said. The opposition parties demanded that the exercise be stopped, with time still in hand. The Supreme Court meanwhile is slated to continue hearing the petitions challenging the exercise on Monday (July 28). The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
India.com
2 hours ago
- India.com
Meet actress who allegedly dated star cricketer, later married into a royal family, sparked controversy due to..., she is...
While most heroines were told their careers ended with motherhood, Moon Moon Sen did the exact opposite. She married into royalty, had two daughters, and then made her big-screen debut at 30. With her first film Andar Baahar in 1984, she raised eyebrows. But it wasn't just her looks that made headlines; it was her confidence and bold choices, both onscreen and off. She later shared screen space with Madhuri Dixit in 100 Days and acted in a string of notable films like Kuch Toh Hai, Zakhmi Dil, Mohabbat Ki Kasam, and Sheesha opposite Mithun Chakraborty. Across Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada films, she appeared in over 60 films and 40+ TV shows. Where did she come from? Born into privilege, Moon Moon was the daughter of Bengali legend Suchitra Sen and granddaughter of a wealthy businessman, Adinath Sen. She was an English literature teacher in Kolkata and studied at Oxford before Bollywood found her. She married Bharat Dev Varma, from a royal lineage, in 1978. The couple has two daughters, Riya and Raima, both of whom tried their hand at acting. What about the Imran Khan connection? The buzz around Moon Moon wasn't limited to her films. Over the years, she was linked to several high-profile names, from Saif Ali Khan and Romu Sippy to Victor Banerjee. But the most talked-about was her alleged affair with former Pakistani cricketer and PM, Imran Khan. The media claimed the two dated and even shot for a magazine together, while Moon Moon was married. In a 2019 interview with PTI, she addressed it, 'I like spending time with Imran. If my husband doesn't have a problem, why should others?' She added that they were just friends. But the buzz never quite died down. Did she stop at films? Nope. Moon Moon later joined politics, becoming a member of Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress and winning a Lok Sabha seat. Politics, like cinema, welcomed her late, but she made it count. Moon Moon Sen's story is one of charm, controversy, and breaking conventions. From teaching English to starring in 6 languages and facing political elections, her script was anything but ordinary.
Indian Express
4 hours ago
- Indian Express
Long before Magna Carta, Cholas had ‘ballot pots': What is the ancient voting system PM Modi lauded?
Standing before the thousand-year-old stone temple built by Rajendra Chola I, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said the Chola empire carried forward India's ancient democratic traditions. 'Historians talk about Britain's Magna Carta in the name of democracy,' he said, referring to the 1215 English charter. 'But many centuries ago, elections were held in the Chola Empire through a democratic method.' Long before the Enlightenment in Europe birthed the ideals of representative governance, the Cholas had etched out rules for local self-rule, literally inscribed into stone. The inscriptions of Uttaramerur, a village in present-day Kanchipuram district, offer some of the world's earliest surviving evidence of a formal electoral system. As chronicled by K A Nilakanta Sastri in The Cholas (1935), the Chola administrative framework was built on two foundational units: the Sabha for Brahmin settlements and the Ur for non-Brahmin villages. These were not symbolic councils but elected bodies with real powers over revenue, irrigation, temple management, and even justice. 'It was democracy at the grassroots — built into the fabric of Tamil civic life,' Sastri wrote in Chapter VIII, 'Local Self-Government'. But what made the system particularly striking was the method of voting, a process called the Kudavolai system or 'ballot pot' election. Under this method, as detailed in the Uttaramerur Inscriptions documented in Epigraphia Indica Vol. XXII (1933–34), the names of eligible candidates were inscribed on palm leaves and placed inside a pot. A young boy, typically chosen for his impartiality, would draw the lot in full public view. This randomised draw was not a game of chance but a civic ritual rooted in transparency, fairness, and collective consent. While many historians say it as one designed to combine divine will and civic integrity, essentially to ensure that power was not monopolised by dynastic elites, eligibility criteria under the system were strict. Candidates had to own tax-paying land, be between 35 and 70 years old, possess knowledge of Vedic texts or administration, and have no record of crime or domestic abuse. Debt defaulters, alcoholics, and close relatives of sitting members were disqualified. 'The disqualifications were perhaps even more revealing than the qualifications, laying out a moral vision of public service,' Sastri wrote. Accountability was embedded. Annual audits were mandatory. Misappropriation of funds or dereliction of duty could lead to disqualification from future office, a radical mechanism even by modern standards. Inscription no. 24 from Epigraphia Indica details the dismissal of a treasury officer over embezzlement, followed by a fine. These weren't isolated experiments. As Anirudh Kanisetti notes in Lords of the Earth and Sea (Penguin, 2023), the Chola model of statecraft relied heavily on decentralised administrative systems. By empowering merchant guilds such as the Manigramam and Ayyavole, and sustaining local assemblies, the Cholas expanded both trade and legitimacy. 'Imperial rule,' Kanisetti wrote, 'was constructed not just through conquest, but by engineering sustainable civic systems'. This is the vision Modi looked to tap into when he said, 'We hear about kings who brought gold, silver, and livestock after conquests. But Rajendra Chola brought Gangajal', a reference to the emperor's symbolic act of bringing Ganga water to his new capital, Gangaikonda Cholapuram, in 1025 CE. The act, memorialised in copper plates (as cited in Sastri's The Cholas), was described as building a 'liquid pillar of victory (ganga-jalamayam jayastambham)', merging military triumph with ritual statecraft. However, the Chola system was far from egalitarian in the modern sense. It excluded women, labourers, and landless groups. But as historian Tansen Sen wrote in The Military Campaigns of Rajendra Chola, the Cholas were masters of strategic signalling, not just through naval conquests but in governance structures that prefigured electoral thought.
