The Madras High Court has instructed both the police and the RSS to finalise the route march details in accordance with the guidelines established by this court in its order dated January 5, 2023. They are to report on September 30, 2024, at 2:15 pm.
Tirupur RSS mandal secretary M Jothiprakash and K Sethuraj, joint secretary RSS in Dindigul have filed petitions in Madras High Court seeking a direction from police. The appealed to the court to direct the police to allow them to hold the annual route marches on October 6 to celebrate Vijayadasami at 58 locations across the state. The petition came up before Justice G Jayachandran.
The petitioners counsel argued that their request aligns with a High Court directive from January 5, which provided guidelines for conducting such rallies. The petitioner said that, despite submitting applications for permission in accordance with these guidelines, the police have not acted on them. They emphasized that permission is required a week in advance of the route marches. After hearing both sides, the judge scheduled the matter for further hearing on the September 24 and granted time to consider the applications submitted by the petitioners.
When the matter came up for hearing on September 26, the judge in his order said, ‘The learned Senior Counsels appearing for some of the writ petitioners today reported that yesterday late night, the representatives have been rejected on the flimsy reasons just to reject the request and circumvent the earlier orders of the Court and the Hon’ble Supreme Court passed in this matter’.
The judge said the Government Advocate submitted that some of the basic particulars, such as starting and ending point of the route march, number of participants, space for parking vehicles were not provided in the representation, and that is the reason for rejecting the representation.
Justice Jayachandran said, ‘This Court finds that for the reasons mentioned, the representations ought not to have been rejected. As already observed by this Court in the earlier judgment, dated September 22, 2022, the Station Officer could have called the organizer to provide necessary details and completed the process of granting permission without rejecting it outright. In any event, the learned Senior Counsels appearing for the petitioners state that wherever the rejection order issued, they have already provided the information sought by the police.
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