Madras High Court asks TN Assembly Secretariat to respond by March 11 on plea for live streaming

Chennai: The Madras High Court on Tuesday asked the Tamil Nadu Assembly Secretariat to respond, by March 11, on a plea seeking the live streaming of Assembly proceedings.

The court asked whether the Assembly Secretariat could live stream the proceedings with a time lag of five to ten minutes.

A bench of Chief Justice Sanjay V.Gangapurwala and Justice Bharatha Chakravarthy said that when the Parliament proceedings were being live streamed, why was the Tamil Nadu Assembly Secretariat not doing that.

The court was responding to a writ petition filed by DMDK leader and filmstar Vijayakant (now deceased) of 2015 and another writ petition filed by AIADMK leader S.P. Velumani filed in 2023.

Senior counsel Vijay Narayan, representing Velumani, said that the Assembly secretariat was blacking out issues raised by the opposition in the Assembly when the live streaming was taking place, while the DMDK responded that a new litigant would take the place of the deceased Vijayakant.

Advocate General P.S. Raman, in his deposition before the court, said that the proceedings were being live streamed but on occasions, the Speaker expunges certain unsavoury remarks from the records.

At this, Chief Justice Gangapurwala asked the AG that if such unsavory remarks were streamlined live, it would go against the member concerned.

He also asked if the Assembly Secretariat could delay the proceedings by five to ten minutes.

As the AG stated that writ petitions could not be filed seeking a direction to the Speaker, who was the custodian of the house, the Chief Justice agreed with his statement but said that the court wanted to know why the state was not live telecasting the proceedings while the Parliament was doing so and asked the A-G to respond by March 11.