Chennai: The Tamil Nadu government yesterday submitted that the Centre's act of revoking the state's second detention order of PMK legislator J Guru under the National Security Act for his alleged inflammatory speech in April this year had not mentioned any reason.
Guru, arrested after his alleged inflammatory speech in the PMK youth conference at Mamallapuram in April this year, was later detained under NSA.
When a representation was made to the Centre, the detention order was quashed and so too was another such order. The state again passed a similar order under NSA on August 23.
The state challenged revocation of the second order by a a petition, which came up for hearing yesterday before a Division Bench, comprising Justices V Dhanapalan and C T Selvam.
Senior counsel of Supreme Court K T S Tulsi, appearing for the state, said the revocation order was passed without mentioning any reasons and the state government had not received it since the past 55 days.
Charging the Centre with taking contradictory views, he said on the one hand it stated the order is in terms of this court's judgement and on the other that there is no need for it to mention reasons for revocation as is violates the same order of this court.
Tulsi also submitted it is the state's constitutional responsibility to safeguard life and liberty of its people.
He contended there are sufficient grounds for detention as Guru's inflammatory speech had resulted in eruption of violence, in which about 800 buses were burnt and property worth about Rs 80 crore damaged.
In the absence of any reasons the state is entitled to infer there were no reasons for quashing the order, he said.
P Wilson, Additional Solicitor General appearing for the Centre, said a gist of revocation order was conveyed to the state and there is no need to send the entire reasoning orders.
He also submitted the Centre had considered the report sent by the state Government and applied its mind before passing the revocation order.
The Collector, an executive, cannot question the Centre's order as substitute of State Government who has passed it by way of petition which deserves to be dismissed, Wilson said.
N R Elango, senior counsel for Guru submitted his client was languishing in jail for nearly four months while the State and Centre are fighting their powers and jurisdiction.
Referring to a Supreme Court Judgement he said there is no need for reasoning for disposing a representation and that the Centre had disposed his client's representation by revoking the order. So government's petition deserves to be dismissed.
The arguments will continue today.
