The Supreme Court having put paid to AIADMK leader VK Sasikala’s ambition of becoming the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu by convicting her in the 20-year-old disproportionate assets case and sending her to jail for three years and 11 months, the onus is now on Governor Vidyasagar Rao to take a quick and constitutionally correct action in bringing the curtains down on the two-month-long soap opera. The majority of the AIADMK MLAs enjoying Sasikala’s bountiful hospitality in a beach resort near the Madras Atomic Power Plant for the last few days elected Edapadi Palaniswami, public works minister, as the Legislative Party leader. He has staked his claim to be sworn in as Chief Minister. The Governor is inclined to favour interim Chief Minister O Panneerselvam who simply does not have the numbers in spite of overwhelming public sympathy. In a landmark judgment on Tuesday, a Bench of Justices PC Ghose and Amitava Roy came down heavily on corruption in high places and said that former Chief Minister Jayalalitha did not accommodate Sasikala in her Poes Garden residence out of some philanthropic urge but with cold-blooded calculation to keep herself secure from any legal complications that may arise from their criminal activities. The judgment, which restored the September 2014 judgment of the trial court in toto, is more an indictment of Jayalalitha than Sasikala or the other two, VN Sudhakaran and J Elavarasi, but death has abated the criminal case against Jayalalitha. Nevertheless, her properties, including bank accounts, will be confiscated to realise the fine of Rs 100 crore imposed on her. The other three accused have been fined Rs 10 crore each.
Ends of justice in this case will not be fully met unless the Supreme Court takes a closer look at the manner in which Judge CR Kumarasamy of the Karnataka High Court who quashed the conviction of Jayalalitha and others, conducted the case. He allowed the Tamil Nadu government of Jayalalitha to appoint the prosecutor whereas it was the responsibility of Karnataka once the case was transferred to that state. By the time Karnataka appointed a prosecutor, Kumarasamy had completed oral hearing and gave just a day for the prosecutor to give a written submission which he ignored while writing his judgment. Justice Amitava Roy, in an add-on to the judgment authored by Justice Ghose, said corruption was a vice of insatiable avarice for self-aggrandizement by the unscrupulous, taking unfair advantage of their power and authority. “The pernicious menace stemming from moral debasement of the culpable, apart from destroying the sinews of the nation’s structural and moral setup, forges an unfair advantage of the dishonest over the principled, widening the divide between the haves and the have-nots…This virulent affliction triggers an imbalance in society’s existential strata and stalls constructive progress in the overall wellbeing of the nation, besides disrupting its dynamics of fiscal governance. It encourages defiance of the rule of law and the propensities for easy materialistic harvests whereby society’s soul stands defiled, devalued and denigrated,” the judge wrote, like delivering a sermon from the pulpit of the Supreme Court. The AIADMK government of Panneerselvam wants Jayalalitha to be conferred with the Bharat Ratna!
Advertisement
