Senthil Balaji's continuation as minister does not augur well, serves no purpose: Madras HC

The first division bench of Chief Justice S V Gangapurwala and Justice PD Audikesavalu made the observation while disposing of a batch of petitions filed by two advocates and former AIADMK MP Dr J Jayavardhan challenging the government’s decision to let the arrested minister to continue in the Tamil Nadu cabinet.

Further, the judges said that chief minister M K Stalin may be well advised to take a decision on keeping the arrested minister in his cabinet in the light of the observations made by them. The court has left it to the CM to now take a decision on the matter.

The petitioners in this case had approached the high court stating that the court has power under Article 22 of the Constitution to declare a person unfit to hold a post.

"When a person becomes disgrace to a post, the court can very well declare him unfit to the post. While the CM was right in removing Senthil Balaji from his post as electricity minister after his arrest, he has erred in allowing him to continue as a minister," said the petitioners.

On June 14, Senthil Balaji, who was then Tamil Nadu electricity minister, was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a money laundering case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The case pertained to an old cash-for-jobs scam that he was allegedly involved in when he had been transport minister in the earlier AIADMK regime. His case papers were recently transferred to a special court for trial of cases exclusively against MLAs and MPs

The minister is currently under judicial custody in Puzhal Central Jail.