Madras High Court dismisses plea by Thol Thirumavalavan to review order granting permission for RSS route march

The Madras High Court Tuesday dismissed a petition filed by Member of Parliament Thol Thirumavalavan seeking that the court review its September order where it had granted permission to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to conduct a state wide route march on October 2. .A bench of Justice GK Ilanthiraiyan said that Thirumavalavan was not a party to the original writ petition seeking permission for the route march, and he was not directly involved in the matter in any way. Therefore, the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi leader had no locus standi in the matter, the high court said..The Court also said that Thirumavalavan had failed to point out any apparent error in the order passed on September 22, granting permission for the route march and, therefore, the order did not warrant a review. Justice Ilanthiraiyan said that if Thirumavalavan was aggrieved by the order, he should have filed an appeal challenging it instead of seeking leave to review it. "Insofar as the prayer to grant leave is concerned, admittedly, the petitioner is not a party to all the Writ Petitions and he is no way connected with the Writ Petitioners. The relief sought for in the Writ Petitions is that they were seeking permission to conduct procession and public meeting on 02.10.2022. The grievance of the petitioner is that the petitioner also sought for permission to conduct procession on the same day in all parts of Tamil Nadu. However, the said request was also rejected by the authority concerned. If at all the petitioner aggrieved by the order passed by this Court, he can very well challenge the said order in the manner known to law. Therefore, the petitioner has no locus to review the order passed by this Court," the Court said. .Thirumavalavan had argued that the bunch of 50 odd petitions by the RSS seeking permission for the route march had raised a dispute of a civil nature, and therefore, those should not have been placed before the criminal bench. He argued that Justice Ilanthiraiyan's bench did not have the jurisdiction to preside over the pleas, and therefore, could not have passed the order asking the police to grant permission. On Tuesday however, the Court said that the RSS members had filed their petitions after the local police had failed to respond to their representations seeking permission for the March. The RSS functionaries had then come to court seeking a direction to the police to decide on their representations. Therefore, the present bench had the jurisdiction to preside over the writ petitions, the Court said. .On September 22 Justice GK Ilanthiraiyan had directed the TN police to grant permission to the RSS by September 28 to carry out a route march led by a musical procession at 51 locations across the state on October 2. The RSS had claimed that the event was meant to commemorate 75 years of Indian independence, Gandhi Jayanti, Vijay Dasamai, RSS' foundation day, and to pay respect to BR Ambedkar.When the police once again denied permission citing law and order concerns around Gandhi Jayanti and in light of the ban on the Popular Front of India, the Court directed the Tamil Nadu police to grant the petitioners permission to conduct such march on November 6 instead. Advocate NGR Prasad appeared for Thirumavalavan. State Public Prosecutor Hasan Mohammad Jinnah appeared for the Tamil Nadu police. Senior counsel S Prabakaran and advocate Rabu Manohar are the counsels for the RSS.[Read Judgment]