Chennai: The state government on Wednesday informed the Madras high court that it had directed the police to grant permission to the DMK to hold public meetings at 102 places across the state.
Additional advocate general P.H. Arvindh Pandian made this submission when the petition filed by R.S. Bharathi, the organising secretary of DMK, seeking police permission for its proposed public meetings on October 3 and 4 against the AIADMK government, came up for hearing before Justice R. Mahadevan.
When the case came up for hearing, senior counsel P. Wilson, appearing for the petitioner submitted that because of the government’s instructions, the police rejected all the applications, seeking permission, on the same grounds.
“Expressing our opinion in a public platform is protected by Article 19 (1) (a) and 19 (1) (b) of the Constitution. One order stated that the meeting is proposed to be conducted for the purpose of criticising the government, therefore the application was rejected,” Wilson pointed out.
After the judge orally asked how the police can take a decision to reject uniformly all the applications, AAG submitted that the government has now directed the police to grant permission to hold meetings at 102 places. 17 applications were rejected and in five applications, alternative places were sought, he added.
Recording the same, the judge posted to October 4, further hearing of the case.
In his petition, Bharathi submitted that the DMK, which was the main opposition party with 88 MLAs in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly, has taken a decision to organise meetings through out the state on October 3 and 4 under the caption Commission-Collection-Corruption against the present AIADMK government.
As per the decision of the party, all respective district and town secretaries have given representations to the competent police officers requesting them to grant permission to conduct public meetings in the notified places and to give adequate police protection. But all applications were rejected, Bharathi added.
