Chennai: Deprecating the practice of filing public interest litigation with vague averments of offensive words, for gaining publicity, the Madras high court has imposed a cost of Rs 25,000 on social activist ‘Traffic’ Ramaswamy and an advocate and rejected their plea to direct the authorities to provide security and safety to the citizens of TN and ensure that fundamental rights were complied with.
Dismissing the PIL filed by Ramaswamy and advocate N. Rajaraman, a division bench, comprising justices S. Vaidyanathan and R. Mahadevan, directed the petitioners to pay the cost within four weeks and if such deposit was made, the registry was directed to remit the amount towards Jammu and Kashmir flood relief fund immediately.
In case it was not deposited within the time stipulated, the registry was directed to recover the same by coercive means as laid down by the Supreme Court in Dr B Singh’s case. The registry was directed to be careful while numbering the petitions (if any) being filed by the petitioners in future and enclose the earlier orders of this court wherein costs were imposed, the bench added.
The bench said it was of the view that the petition was filed by primarily for gaining media publicity, coupled with defects, such as vagueness, impracticable relief, etc.
It observed that the petitioner (‘Traffic’ Ramaswamy) is a person always busy and focusing the matters by a number of petitions especially in the form of PIL and he became versatile in the PIL matters. The attitude of the petitioners in approaching this court was highly deprecated. “We are of the view that the present petition deserves to be dismissed with exemplary cost. We dismiss the petition with cost of Rs 25,000 for having wasted the valuable judicial time which could be otherwise utilised for disposal of genuine cases.”
