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Supreme Court drives Karunanidhi fete indoors

Former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalitha got a boost yesterday when the Supreme Court admitted a special leave petition filed by her and restricted the use of the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Madras to celebrate the 74th birthday of Chief Minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi on Sunday, September 27.

The court asked the organisers, the Tamil Nadu Film Producers' Association, to confine the celebrations to the gallery of the stadium without affecting in any manner the lawns and the synthetic athletic track.

Following this, the function has been shifted to the adjacent multipurpose indoor stadium. The TNFPA is felicitating Karunanidhi for his contribution to the Tamil film industry as a story, screenplay, and dialogue writer of repute.

Earlier, the Madras high court had allowed the function to take place on the ground with some conditions to safeguard the lawns and turf.

But a three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice M M Punchhi, Justices G B Pattanaik and A P Mishra decreed that the stadium should not be used for non-sporting activities, notwithstanding the celebrations organised during Jayalalitha's rule. "We permit it just this once and not ever hereafter," they said.

The judges said there is a clear ban by the state government, dating back to 1982, on the staging of non-sporting functions in stadia all over the state. "We see no reason why the ban should not be enforced," they said.

The court said the stadium built with taxpayers' money and having an international reputation should be maintained as such and not treated as any other place to be hired and used.

This will not be the first time a film industry function is being held at the indoor stadium. For the last two years, the annual film awards function of Tamil film magazine Cinema Express has been staged there.

UNI

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