Madras High Court Closes Contempt Case Related To River Linking Project

There is no willful disobedience of an order passed in 2015 with regard to implementation of Thamirabarani-Karumeniyar-Nambiar river linking project, the Madras High Court on Tuesday said and closed a contempt of court application filed in 2017 by the then DMK MLA P Appavu.

Mr Appavu is currently the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly.

Holding that no case is made out for initiating contempt proceedings, the first bench of Chief Justice M N Bhandari and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy closed the petition, which sought to punish the then Chief Secretary Girija Vaidyanathan.

The contempt petition was filed in 2017 alleging the state government had committed 'willful disobedience' of the court order passed in 2015 on the time bound implementation of the third and fourth phase of project to take water to Radhapuram in Tirunelveli district and its surrounding areas.

The bench said no case for contempt of court is made out. It asked the counsel for the petitioner that what order of the court was violated and pointed out that there is no direction and no contempt as well. The contempt of court petition is closed and the notices issued were discharged, the bench said in the order.

Petitioner had alleged that the AIADMK government put the project, introduced by the earlier DMK government, on the backburner after coming to power in 2011.

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