While the state of Tamil Nadu is beavering over the demise of their beloved leader M. Karunanidhi, there is an internal battle as to where the DMK leader will be buried.
M. Karunanidhi had wished to be buried at the Marine Beach next to his mentor CN Annadurai’s grave, which led to a legal battle in the High Court.
The Madras High Court has adjourned the hearing of DMK’s plea seeking burial of late party supremo M Karunanidhi’s mortal remains at Chennai’s Marina Beach. The court will now resume hearing at 8 am as Tamil Nadu government has reportedly sought more time to file a reply in the case.
The high court has given the state 7 hours to make up its mind.
The judges heard the arguments by counsel for the DMK and the state government before adjourning the matter around 1.15 a.m for resumed hearing at 8 in the morning. The DMK counsel wanted to know the legal ground on which its demand was rejected following which the advocates for the government pleaded for time till morning to file a counter affidavit which the court allowed.
Within minutes of Karunanidhi’s death, a huge row erupted after the state’s AIADMK government rejected the demand of the DMK, its long-standing political rival in state politics, for land on the famed sands of the Marina beach where he could be buried. Wasting no time, DMK’s counsel P Wilson and A Saravanan rushed to the residence of HG Ramesh, the Acting Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, with a plea to direct the state government to revoke its decision denying permission for Karunanidhi’s burial and erection of a memorial to him on the beach. Their plea was granted and Justice Ramesh and his fellow judge S S Sundar began hearing the petition minutes before midnight.
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In a twist to the late night proceedings, unprecedented in Tamil Nadu’s legal history, two of the petitioners who had moved the court against late chief minister J Jayalalithaa’s burial at the Marina and construction of a memorial there, withdrew their applications. One of them, advocate S Duraisamy, said the claim of the government that the memorial to Karunanidhi’s mentor and former chief minister C N Annadurai facing the Marina beach, where the DMK sought land for its leader’s burial, was in an ecologically sensitive zone, was “misleading”. He told reporters outside the Acting Chief Justice’s residence that it was on the banks of the Cooum river close to the beach but not in the eco-sensitive zone like the memorials of Jayalalithaa and former AIADMK chief minister the late M G Ramachandran.
Similarly, K Balu of PMK also withdrew his petition seeking the court’s direction against the use of the Marina as a burial ground. Earlier in the day, another PIL filed in the Madras High Court seeking to restrain the Corporation of Greater Chennai from permitting any burial of bodies on the Marina beach was dismissed as withdrawn.
Initially, the only two Tamil Nadu chief ministers to have memorials in their honor at Marina beach were Chief Ministers CN Annadurai, who founded the DMK and MG Ramachandran, who launched the AIADMK.
The DMK said the AIADMK’s refusal to give six-feet land to bury the five-time chief minister “reeks of pettiness and political vendetta”.
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