The Jayalalithaa government in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday scored a legal victory when the Madras high court declined to interfere with its decision to shift to the state secretariat and assembly to Fort St George from the Rs 1,000 crore complex, a pet project of the previous Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam regime.
Dismissing a PIL petition seeking to forbear the government from going ahead with its decision, a bench said, "It is for the government to decide as to which building shall be comfortable for establishing the state secretariat."
The bench comprising Chief Justice M Y Eqbal and Justice T S Sivgnanm said if the government took a policy decision to run the secretariat from the old building, the court could not issue a direction to change it.
The judges said they did not find any merit in the writ petition filed by city advocate Krishnamurthy, who contended that the move was illegal, arbitrary, unauthorised and against public interest.
The shifting was unmindful of the huge expenditure incurred already and borne out of "whims and fancies of those in power," the petitioner submitted.
Rejecting the petition, the bench observed that it was well settled that the PIL is not meant to be a weapon to challenge the financial, economic or other decisions of the government taken in exercise of its administrative power.
"It has also been settled by the Supreme Court that the forum of PIL is not meant for serving political purpose or solving political problems which should be solved through the political process and not through the judicial process," the judges held.
The concept of PIL was evolved for safeguarding the interest and welfare of the poor people who are in a disadvantaged position and not to decide the propriety of the policy decision of the government, it said.
The high court ruling has come days after it stayed an amendment to the Uniform System of School Education Act by the All India Anna Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam government to defer the implementation of the scheme introduced by the previous regime.
The DMK government had built the new assembly-secretariat complex, a pet project of then chief minister M Karunanidhi, off arterial Anna Road in the heart of city and the assembly complex was inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year. The work on the secretariat is yet to be completed.
The AIADMK government's decision to dump the new complex came under criticism from DMK and its allies, but Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has defended it saying the move to stick with the 17th century Fort St George was due to administrative considerations and denied any political bias.
Jayalalithaa, who had earlier ridiculed the design of the new complex describing it as a "circus tent", has recently announced a probe into alleged irregularities in the construction of the new building.
