Parties can’t deface public places: Supreme Court to Tamil Nadu

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi asked the Tamil Nadu government to inform within two weeks about the steps taken regarding prevention of defacement of natural resources like hills, mountains, rocks and public places.

“We will not allow the defacement,” the bench, also comprising justices S A Nazeer and Sanjiv Khanna, observed at the outset of the hearing. The apex court had on January 11 issued notice to the Centre and TN on a plea seeking to restrain political parties from erecting digital banners on roadside across the state.

The court was hearing a petition filed by a charitable trust ‘In Defence of Environment and Animals’ and had asked why the plea should not be kept open, enabling the Madras High Court to monitor the developments in the case. The plea had sought preventing encroachments via religious symbols and political graffiti, advertisements by private parties on natural resources like mountains, hills, hillocks, avenue trees and on national and state highways.

On December 19 last year, the Madras HC had issued an interim order restraining political parties from putting up digital banners on roadside unless the state government and local bodies came out with a clear undertaking that the rules and various orders passed by the court would be strictly implemented and no violation would take place.