No relief for EPS, OPS in banner case

Justice S Vaidyanathan, while dismissing the contempt petition insofar as the Chief Secretary, Corporation Commissioner and Commissioner of Police, Corporation of Chennai, retained all the respondents, including EPS and OPS as party to the proceedings for producing records, if any required by this court to ascertain the violations.

Noting that the order passed by the division bench of this court has not been produced by the Special Government pleader, the judge said, “Whether the contempt petition should be proceeded with or not, would be decided based on the observations made in the writ appeal. Only after going through the order passed by the division bench and ascertaining whether the entire order of this court dated October 23, 2017, has been interfered with, this court can proceed with the contempt petition.”

Also, leaving it open to decide all the issues, after going through the order passed by the bench, Justice Vaidyanathan said, “The portraying of pictures is not going to affect the persons on the banner and it is only causing danger to other persons and once such noticeable incident is the Coimbatore incident.” 

The contempt plea was moved by social activist Traffic Ramaswamy seeking to punish the respondents including EPS, OPS, Thol Thirumavalavan and MLA B Sathyanarayanan, for their willful disobedience of the court order which had banned the use of living persons’ pictures in flex boards, sign boards, posters and banners. The case has been listed for further hearing on January 5, 2018.