Madras High Court dismisses petition to confer Bharat Ratna on Jayalalithaa

Chennai: The Madras high court on Friday dismissed a public interest litigation, which sought a direction to the Union government to confer Bharat Ratna award on former Chief Minister late J.Jayalalithaa.

Dismissing the PIL filed by Tamil Nadu Centre for Public Interest Litigation represented by its managing trustee K.K.Ramesh, a division bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M.Sundar said, "The award of Bharat Ratna to any person falls within the domain of the executive function and it is not for the court to issue directions as to who should be given the award or not".

Narrating her cinema career right from her first movie to the last film, Ramesh in his petition submitted that Jayalalithaa had bagged several awards including Tamil Nadu State Film Award for Best Actress.

Similarly, narrating her political career, Ramesh submitted that Jayalalithaa was the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for five times. Her first aim was to solve humble problem of poor people. Hence, she consulted the officials and opened Amma canteen at a very lowest price, and Amma medical aids and gave different schemes particularly she gave free sanitary napkins to the female students all over the state and gave laptops and cycles and free foods and also cattle to land less poor agriculturists and also she waived the agriculture loans of farmers. Therefore, she was by the public and for the public. She cared the people as a mother. So she was called as Amma by the people of Tamil Nadu, he added.