OPS plea against GC meeting to be heard on Aug 10

Justice G Jayachandran of the Madras High Court, who has been named as the judge to hear the arguments on the civil suits from AIADMK ousted leader O Panneerselvam (OPS) and another general council member Vairamuthu, which challenged the July 11 general council meeting of the party, will hear them in the afternoon of August 10.

This adjournment followed a submission from the senior counsel of OPS, on Monday.

When the matter came up today, senior advocate P H Arvind Pandian sought postponement to enable another senior counsel from New Delhi to come and argue the case on Wednesday.

Originally, the suits were heard by Justice Krishnan Ramaswamy, who on July 11 had refused to stay the conduct of the general council meeting on the same day. He also made some observations against OPS that day.

Aggrieved, the advocates of OPS met Chief Justice M N Bhandari on August 3 with a plea to transfer the case to some other judge.

When the matter came up again on August 4 before Justice Krishnan Ramaswamy as scheduled, the judge chided OPS and his lawyers for approaching the Chief Justice the previous day with the plea to change the judge and the advocates tendered unconditional apologies. He directed them to file a memo in this connection and get their earlier plea seeking the case transfer, officially returned and passed over the matter. Later, the advocates told Justice Ramaswamy that the formality to get back the plea was completed. At this stage, the judge announced that he was recusing himself from holding further hearing on the two suits and directed the Registry to take the follow up action to place the matter before the CJ. Later in the evening, the CJ announced that Justice Jayachandran will hear the suits on Monday (today).