Panchami land row | Madras High Court grants final opportunity to National Commission for Scheduled Castes to file counter to Murasoli Trust

The Madras High Court on Tuesday granted a final opportunity to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) to file a counter affidavit to a 2020 writ petition moved by Murasoli Trust, associated with the DMK, against an inquiry into a complaint of it occupying over 12 grounds of Panchami land in Kodambakkam in Chennai.

The Madras High Court on Tuesday granted a final opportunity to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) to file a counter affidavit to a 2020 writ petition moved by Murasoli Trust, associated with the DMK, against an inquiry into a complaint of it occupying over 12 grounds of Panchami land in Kodambakkam in Chennai.

Justice Anita Sumanth accepted a request made by Additional Solicitor General AR.L. Sundaresan to grant him time till June 27 to file the counter affidavit and also asked the law officer to produce the rules of procedure, if any, followed by the national commission while inquiring into complaints received by it on issues concerning Scheduled Castes.

The interim order was passed after senior counsel P. Wilson, representing the petitioner trust, contended that the commission had no authority whatsoever to usurp the jurisdiction of a civil court which alone could decide the title of a property. He sought a writ of prohibition restraining the commission from proceeding forward with the inquiry.

He brought it to the notice of the court that it was R. Srinivasan of the BJP who had complained against the trust to the commission in 2019. Immediately, the then vice-chairman of the commission L. Murugan (now Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting) issued notices to the trustees and summoned them for an inquiry. Wondering how the commission could take cognisance of a complaint on which it had to decide the title over a property, Mr. Wilson asked: “Suppose if someone lodges a complaint that Kamalalayam (BJP’s headquarters in Tamil Nadu) is situated on Panchami land, will the commission conduct an inquiry on that too?”

He also told the court that Justice C.V. Karthikeyan had, in January 2020, passed an interim order restraining the NCSC from giving a finding on the title of the property and had also ordered that the commission must be represented only by the chairman and not the vice-chairman since personal bias had been alleged against the latter.

Despite such a clear order, the chairman had not filed a counter affidavit yet, he complained to the court. After hearing him, the judge asked the ASG to make sure that the counter affidavit was filed by June 27 since the writ petition had been pending since 2020 and also asked the commission to explain whether it had the jurisdiction to inquire into the complaint.