Cancel Palanisamy trust vote, MK Stalin urges President Pranab Mukherjee

CHENNAI: DMK working president M.K. Stalin on Thursday met President Pranab Mukherjee and submitted a petition to cancel the confidence vote passed in the Assembly on February 18 and order taking up the voting again through secret ballot.

Stalin said he had complained about the functioning of Speaker P. Dhanapal in the Assembly and explained the incidents that took place. Addressing the media after meeting the President, Stalin said he had told the President that the confidence motion was taken up after the forcible eviction of DMK MLAs en masse.

The party had requested the President to cancel confidence motion passed in the Assembly and order fresh voting through secret ballot, he said. In the memorandum, the DMK brought to the President’s notice “the undemocratic and unconstitutional conduct” . It said the AIADMK MLAs were taken to a sea-side resort at Koovathur 70 km from Chennai, detained illegally and their freedom of movement was curtailed.

The petition said Speaker P. Dhanapal facilitated Edappadi K. Palanisami to prove his majority within two days and accordingly the House was hastily convened on February 18. It alleged Speaker neither applied his mind while convening nor ascertained whether the MLAs were attending the Assembly with free will and consent. It further alleged “At one stage, the Speaker brought the police of the city law and order wing inside the house dressed as Assembly Marshals to conceal their identity, illegally and forcibly expelled and evicted all the DMK MLAs without following the procedure prescribed and forced the other opposition parties to walk out.

Stalin, who explained the contents to media said the DMK did not encourage violent activities in the Assembly, he said and recalled the violence that occurred in 1988 between the factions of former Chief Minister V.N. Janaki and J. Jayalalithaa in the Assembly. When asked about AIADMK deputy general secretary T.T.V. Dinakaran’s comments that Stalin’s Delhi visit would end in failure, he said “I need not answer him. I did not ask permission from him to come to Delhi”.

When asked about Jayalalithaa’s niece J. Deepak opposing the appointment of Dinakaran, he said “It could be some personal problem. It is an internal problem of AIADMK and the DMK will not interfere”. Reacting to a question why Deepak who was with Sasikala during the funeral of Jayalalithaa is opposing Dinakaran now, the DMK leader said “The truths are coming out. Panneerselvam started speaking only after he lost the CM post. But, the DMK was pressing for the release of Jaya’s treatment details even before her death”.

He demanded that CM order a probe into Jayalalithaa’s death and promised that the DMK, which would come to power soon would order such an enquiry. He was accompanied by party principal secretary K. Duraimurugan, MPs T.K.S. Elangovan, Tiruchy N.Siva and R.S. Bharathi.

Stalin seeks video footage of Assembly proceedings from Speaker:

DMK working president M.K. Stalin on Thursday requested Speaker P. Dhanapal to provide the unedited video footage of the proceedings of the Assembly during the session on 18 February. In a letter to the Speaker, he said the Madras High Court had passed n oral direction to produce the video footage of the proceedings, during the hearing on the DMK’s petition on the proceedings.

He said his party advocates had argued that there were patent illegalities in the Assembly proceedings. He also requested the Speaker to give the requisite certificate along with the video footage as per section 65-B of the Indian Evidence Act for producing in court during the next hearing on 27 February.