Madras HC presses ECI on AIADMK symbol decision delay
There are multiple civil suits pending in courts regarding the issues.
When the petitions filed by EPS seeking a direction to the ECI for speedy disposal of the representations, which were submitted by expelled AIADMK party men including former MPs P Ravindranath, KC Palanisamy and Surya Moorthy, came up for hearing, the ECI's counsel Niranjan Rajagopalan told the HC that the commission would take a decision 'as expeditiously as possible' and time frame need not be set by the court.
The bench of Justices R Subramanian and K Surender said it could see 'hesitation' on the part of the ECI and asked its counsel whether he wanted the bench to disclose why there is such a 'hesitation'.
Making an oblique reference to the timeline set by the Supreme Court to the President regarding granting of assent to bills passed in State Assemblies in the Tamil Nadu Vs Governor RN Ravi case, the bench said, 'If the President can be set a timeline, why can't the Election Commission?"
It also asked, 'Is the Election Commission above the President? The ECI counsel responded, 'Everyone is equal in the Constitution.'
The two-judge bench directed the counsel to file written instructions by July 21 on the time period by which it can take a decision on the representations and adjourned the hearing.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Indian Express
13 minutes ago
- New Indian Express
Maharashtra CM Fadnavis says no ban on eating non-veg, blames 1988 order for confusion
After an uproar from the Opposition, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Wednesday clarified that his government has not imposed any ban on eating non-vegetarian food on August 15. He stated that in 1988, the erstwhile state government had allegedly issued an order to shut down slaughterhouses, which some municipal corporations have continued to follow. Mr Fadnavis said he was also unaware of reports about a ban on eating non-vegetarian food and the closure of mutton and chicken shops. He added that he then inquired with the municipal corporation which had allegedly issued the order imposing the ban on the sale of mutton and chicken. 'It was revealed that the respective municipal corporation had not given any such order by our government, but followed the 1988 order issued by the erstwhile state government. I was also told that during the Uddhav Thackeray government also, some of the municipal corporations issued similar orders, then why is there hue and cry now,' Mr Fadnavis asked. He said there is freedom to eat and live in the country, and that right has been given by the Constitution, but some people are unnecessarily targeting their government.
Hindustan Times
13 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Citizen-State relations and the burden of document raj
For over a month now, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has ensnared the bulk of Bihar's voting population in a maze of paperwork, thanks to its Special Intensive Review (SIR) of the voter rolls. In the process, widely accepted documents — Aadhaar, ration card and the voter card itself — have been declared suspect, despite the Supreme Court's intervention. Through executive fiat, ECI has created a new, arbitrary document hierarchy, declaring 11 specific documents — some of which even the most privileged Indians struggle to procure — as appropriate for determining citizenship. Now, as the process moves to the question of deletions from the voter rolls and the very real threat of disenfranchisement, ECI is obdurately hiding behind its paperwork, refusing public access to the list of deleted names. This tyranny of paper is also at the centre of another controversy. The enduring image of Rahul Gandhi's recent press conference is the seven-foot-high stack of paper — the physical electoral rolls — that the Congress team trawled through to identify discrepancies. The Indian bureaucracy's obsession with paper (files, orders, documents) is well known. Anthropologist Mathew Hull traces this to the colonial bureaucracy's distrust of local Indian functionaries, which manifested itself in kaghaz raj or 'documentary rule'. (HT Photo) In different ways, both episodes reveal one of the most pernicious aspects of the exercise of State power in India — the use of documents to mediate citizen-State relations and their role in feeding the State's obsession with ordering citizens into administrative categories of 'eligible' and 'ineligible'. Bureaucratic norms cohere around the idea that 'good governance' is about weeding out the 'ineligible'. At one level, this is a legitimate governance impulse. After all, who will disagree with the need to ensure that all citizens access their rights, particularly voting rights, and that no 'ineligible' person misuses the system? However, the practices this unleashes often lead to the kind of documentation chaos as we are witnessing in Bihar. Worse, it opens the window for co-opting bureaucratic practices into legitimising exclusionary political projects. In hiding behind its mounds of paper, obdurately refusing to make its processes and documents transparent to the public, ECI has demonstrated how effectively the State can weaponise paper even in pursuit of ostensibly legitimate goals. Proving eligibility via documents is a unique burden that the Indian State places on its citizens. After Partition, governments in India and Pakistan adopted the practice of adjudicating citizenship claims by evaluating documents such as passports and, later, ration/voter cards that claimants possessed to determine their authenticity as citizens. This, as political scientist Niraja Jayal has argued, inverted the standard relationship between citizenship and documents. In most contexts, the possession of citizenship is the means to acquire identity documents such as passports. In the Indian case, documents became the means for determining citizenship. This penchant for relying on documents to mediate citizenship soon extended to routine administrative tasks. The Indian bureaucracy's obsession with paper (files, orders, documents) is well known. Anthropologist Mathew Hull traces this to the colonial bureaucracy's distrust of local Indian functionaries, which manifested itself in kaghaz raj or 'documentary rule'. Only through a connection with paper, Hull argues, could an action be construed as an action. Contemporary Indian bureaucracy adopted this practice and extended this culture of distrust to how it deals both with itself and with the public at large. In dealing with the public, documents — ration cards, BPL cards, job cards, Aadhaar cards, voter cards — came to play the role of gatekeepers. For citizens, they are the primary means to make themselves visible to the State and place claims. For the State, they are the means through which it seeks to 'see' society, categorising the population into administratively legible segments that become the basis for administrative action. The culture of distrust that underpins this allowed for an intriguing twist. The State took it upon itself to categorise the population as 'eligible' and 'ineligible'; after all, corruption enables the 'ineligible' beneficiary to access the State. But to achieve this goal, the bureaucracy appropriated the power to verify its own documents, casting suspicion both on its documents and, rather conveniently, on those in possession of these documents. This administrative suspicion can easily be weaponised and placed in service of political projects, as we are now witnessing in Bihar. Words like 'verification', 'authentication', 'deletion' and 'doubtful' are routinely deployed in administrative parlance. The citizen is a suspicious actor, in constant need of verification. It is this bureaucratic impulse that has allowed the ECI, with absolutely no irony, to claim the voter card, distributed by its own machinery, to be inaccurate, leaving it to the Supreme Court judges to remind the ECI of the principle of 'presumption of correctness'. Crucially, it is precisely this suspicion that can become a convenient weapon in the politics of exclusion. Political narratives of 'infiltrators' and outsiders find legitimacy precisely because the State regularly reminds us of how suspiciously it views its documents, allowing itself the luxury of authenticating documents at will. It should be no surprise that the spectre of NRC is writ large over the SIR as well. As the SIR and electoral roll controversy unfolds, the risk of mass disenfranchisement (6.5 million deletions in the draft list), procedural arbitrariness, the constitutional overreach of ECI, and its sheer incompetence are at the centre of the ongoing political and legal challenge. The debate, however, is missing a deeper interrogation into the tyranny of paper and the culture of distrust it has entrenched that makes even our institutions capable of undermining democracy and citizens' rights. The struggle to protect democratic freedoms must extend to interrogating and indeed challenging the culture of kaghaz raj within the State that makes critical independent public institutions vulnerable. Yamini Aiyar is senior visiting fellow, Brown University. The views expressed are personal.
The Hindu
13 minutes ago
- The Hindu
Edappadi K. Palaniswami allied with BJP without consulting party: Mutharasan
AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami aligned with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) without consulting his party, prompting members to leave the party, alleged the State secretary of the Communist Party of India, R. Mutharasan, on Wednesday. Mr. Mutharasan told journalists in Salem that BJP had pressured Mr. Palaniswami into joining hands with Union Home Minister Amit Shah. 'In an attempt to strengthen his party's unity, Mr. Palaniswami is trying to create anger among his supporters by alleging that Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi leader Thol. Thirumavalavan spoke ill of former leaders M.G. Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa,' he claimed . 'He (Mr. Palaniswami) is targeting Mr. Thirumavalavan to divert the anger of the AIADMK cadre away from himself,' he added. Mr. Palaniswami and other AIADMK functionaries are running a 'low-level campaign' against Mr. Thirumavalavan on social media and the CPI has condemned it, he said. On the arrest of Madurai Mayor's husband in a property tax scam, Mr. Mutharasan said action must be taken against all those found guilty and, if the Mayor's role was proven, the government should act without hesitation. Criticising the Election Commission, he alleged it had lost its independence and become subservient to the BJP, posing a threat to democracy. Citing the deletion of 65 lakh voters, he claimed names of BJP supporters were retained while opponents were removed. He accused the Union government of forcing Aadhaar for all services despite the Supreme Court ruling that such compulsion was unacceptable. Voter ID and ration cards could be easily forged, a fact acknowledged by the court. India was facing 'gradual democratic erosion' and could soon see BJP critics stripped of citizenship. He urged the public to prepare for a 'second freedom struggle.' Mr. Mutharasan added that thousands of crores lent to fraud-hit companies were written off as non-performing assets, while ordinary citizens struggled to secure and repay small loans. Farmers unable to repay debts were ending their lives, but major defaulters faced no action, he alleged. On actor Mansoor Ali Khan's comment that North Indian migrants should not be included in Tamil Nadu's voter rolls, the CPI leader said large-scale, politically motivated additions and deletions were under way, and the party opposed such practices.
