The Madras High Court in 2022: A year of making enduring changes, one step at a time

The year 2022 began for the Madras High Court, as it did for most institutions in the country post COVID-19, with the decision to resume functioning at full capacity and go back to physical hearings..The High Court found itself inundated with cases, both old and new, but managed to stride on, chalking up case disposal rates that prompted even the Union Law Ministry to express its appreciation on social media..Besides highly charged political controversies, the Court also dealt with pressing social concerns and affirmative action programmes such as ordering the abolition of the orderly system in the police department, calling out everyday misogyny that women litigants face, expanding the scope of Habeas Corpus petitions to pull up State on apparent misuse of preventive detention laws, and paving the way for a first of its kind welfare policy for the entire LGBTQIA+ community in Tamil Nadu. In the words of Justice N Anand Venkatesh, who has been presiding over the LGBTQIA+ matter, the Court in 2022 tried to introduce a "positive change little by little.".Political battles.The Court remained a hotbed for political drama with the infighting within the AIADMK leading to both of its central leaders - Edappadi K Palaniswami (EPS) and O Panneerselvam (OPS) - filing petitions in July, seeking that they be handed over the reign of the party. A division bench of Justices M Duraiswamy and Sundar Mohan eventually allowed the appeal filed by EPS, thus securing his appointment as interim General Secretary of the party. .A month later, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) approached the High Court claiming that the DMK government in Tamil Nadu was prejudiced against it, and was hence denying it permission to conduct a State-wide route march. The appeals and cross-appeals in the RSS matter are still ongoing..Calling out patriarchy among members of the Bar.On November 24 this year, in a rare gesture, Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy called out the misogyny prevalent at the Bar and in society in general, and apologised in open court to four women litigants after a lawyer posed “humiliating questions" during their cross-examination in a property suit.A woman and her three daughters had filed a plea in a local court challenging the decision of their father to bestow all his property to a son born through his second wife. The man had married for a second time without divorcing his first wife, because the first wife had failed to bear him a male child. During the cross-examination before a lower court, the lawyer representing the father had insinuated that the girls' mother had a questionable character, and that the girls were born to another man while their mother had lied about their paternity. When this was brought to Justice Chakravarthy's notice, he was shocked. After passing the judgment in the case, Justice Chakravarthy extracted the instance of misogyny that occurred during the trial, and apologised to the women. Justice Chakravarthy said that it was time that the legal system became a little more empathetic to litigants who approach courts for justice. He went on to say that such misogyny was not restricted to the present case alone, but it reflected the patriarchal mindset of the entire society..Speaking to Bar & Bench, the judge later reflected on the comments he made in the judgment."When I heard the kind of questions that had been posed to the women, I was so disturbed. I found it hard to shake the feeling off. It kept on troubling me throughout the hearing. I immediately asked the counsel to stop arguing and addressed the litigants. The bar, the bench, and the society should not be part of such misogyny. Therefore, it was only natural to apologise to them," he said..Overcoming an Orwellian hurdle.While presiding over two seemingly routine Habeas Corpus petitions in November this year, the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court realised that Tamil Nadu had been topping the list of states with the most preventive detention arrests for a decade. The Court scoured through data to conclude that preventive detention laws were being invoked blindly in the State, as opposed to being used an exigency measure.As per data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and the Prison Statistics India Report, last year, Tamil Nadu reported 1,775 detenues under the Tamil Nadu Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug Offenders, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders, Sand Offenders, Slum Grabbers and Video Pirates Act, 1982, which accounted for 51.2 percent of the total preventive detention cases across the country.A bench of Justices MS Ramesh and N Anand Venkatesh also noted that while a majority of these detention orders get quashed by the High Court, the detenues nevertheless end up spending a substantial time in prison before being set free. This prompted the Court to say that the abuse of preventive detention laws in Tamil Nadu has reached "Orwellian proportions."."The inferences drawn can be twofold: either the State is inching towards lawlessness or that the jurisdiction of suspicion has now become a convenient and potent weapon in the hands of the law enforcing agencies to indiscriminately detain people by a conscious abuse of its statutory powers. It is, therefore, clear to us that the spectre of gross abuse of preventive detention laws hangs over the State and has reached Orwellian proportions," the judges said in their order.As a deterrent, the Court said that it would impose costs on the State whenever a preventive detention order is found to be illegal..In conversation with Bar & Bench, Justice Venkatesh later said that the Bench had decided to expand the scope of the two petitions that it had been hearing to ensure that the police and the State machinery woke up and stepped out of their comfort zones. "Many a times, an exercise which causes embarrassment to an institution, actually acts as the catalyst for evolution which results in improving the standards of criminal justice system," he said..Exorcising the ghosts of a colonial past.In August this year, while hearing a case of unauthorised occupation of police quarters, Justice SM Subramaniam noted that higher officials were maintaining the colonial era orderly system of engaging uniformed service personnel to perform their household work.The judge immediately issued directions to the Tamil Nadu Police to "eradicate in entirety" this archaic system within the police force within four months of the order.."We are approaching 75 years of Independence and yet we could not get rid of this colonial system of using trained police officials as orderlies in the residences of higher officials. It’s shameful," Justice Subramaniam had said at the time. The Court noted that the orderly system continued despite its abolition by a government order issued by the State government on September 5, 1979..Later, in November this year, Justice Subramaniam's Bench encountered another case of the orderly system, this time, in the Central Reserve Police Force. The Court reiterated that menial jobs are below the dignity of trained, uniformed security personnel. It once again directed both the Central and State governments to end the orderly system and said that in case of every complaint received, the salary payable to the government employee who was made to serve as an orderly should be recovered from the officer who made the former perform such duties.