Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami filed two defamation complaints against DMK Chief and Opposition leader MK Stalin. The City Public Prosecutor (CPP) Gowri Ashokan filed these complaints before the Principal Sessions Court.
The complaints have been filed in connection with statements made by MK Stalin against Chief Minister Palaniswami. His statements, published in the party mouthpiece Murasoli on January 28, questioned the Centre’s move to rank Tamil Nadu as the leading state in the Good Governance Index. The DMK Chief also wondered how Tamil Nadu could place first in the category of public security, pointing to the 2019 Pollachi rape case and the killing of protesters during the Sterlite protests in 2018.
The complaints also cite another statement by Stalin made on December 30, where he criticised the state government for arresting six protesters for conducting the ‘kolam’ protest in Chennai. The Public Prosecutor said that these statements were highly defamatory and were made with an intent to malign the reputation of Chief Minister. The criminal defamation has been filed under sections 499 and 500 of IPC.
The state government had previously filed a defamation case against Tamil newspaper Dinakaran in June last year for allegedly publishing false information about the Chief Minister on the three-language policy which was initially mentioned in the draft National Education Policy.
Late AIADMK supremo and former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa was known for filing multiple defamation cases, many of it against journalists. In August 2016, Jayalalithaa’s government was pulled up by the Supreme Court and a bench of Justices Dipak Misra and C Nagappan, admonishing the state for abusing the tool. The Tamil Nadu government had then told the apex court that a total of 213 defamation cases was filed from 2011-2016 when the AIADMK was in power. Of the 213 cases, 55 were filed against the media. The maximum number of defamation cases were filed against archrival, the DMK, with a total of 85 cases filed between May 2011 and July 2016.