Madras HC Refuses To Hear Challenge Against Order Granting Permission For RSS March, Tells VCK leader To Approach Supreme Court

Advocate NGR Prasad today made a mentioning before the bench of Acting Chief Justice T Raja and Justice D Krishnakumar for hearing of an appeal preferred by Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) leader and MP Thirumavalan challenging the single judge order by which the court directed the police authorities to grant permission to RSS to conduct route march with certain conditions.

On Tuesday, Prasad had also made a mention for early hearing of the appeal before a bench of Justice GK Ilanthiraiyan. The bench however said that the matter will be considered in due course.

During the hearing today, Acting Chief Justice T Raja informed the counsels that the main question was whether the court could entertain such a challenge since appeals against orders in criminal matters had to be preferred in the Supreme Court.

To this, Prasad informed the court that recently a division bench of then Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy had held that intra appeals were possible even in criminal matters. Further, he also informed the court that the reliefs sought were civil in nature and thus there was no bar in entertaining the appeals. The Registrar General however informed the court that in view of the earlier decisions of the Supreme Court, the matter could not be heard by the High Court. 

The court agreed with this submission and concluded that it was bound to follow the decision of the Supreme Court and thus refrained from entertaining the appeal.

Criticising the manner in which RSS conducted itself, MP Thirumavalam in his Petition submitted that the organisation was not carrying out activities to advocate non-violence. Their agenda was to create communal disharmony. He also submitted that the organisation will "inject poison on the general public which would create ill motive in the society".

He also submitted that though the court had imposed certain conditions on the organisation, their cadres will not follow the conditions and they will high handedly act to disrupt the public order by creating enmity between groups. Further, before passing of the orders, the court was not informed about the routes in which the procession would be carried out.

Thus, he had sought for injunction restraining the police authorities from granting permission for the route march and to recall the single judge order.