Friday, October 7 2005 17:29 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Chennai: Taking cognizance of photographs published in a Tamil daily today (Oct 7, 2005), the Madras High Court suo motu initiated contempt proceedings against the Tamil Nadu government for allegedly violating a court order on the use of the Nehru Stadium here for a farmers meet on October five.

On October four, a Division Bench, comprising Justice P D Dinakaran and Justice M Thanikachalam, while disposing of a petition seeking to forbid the government from using the stadium for launching a scheme for the benefit of farmers, had laid down certain conditions while permitting its use.

The Judges called the State Advocate General N R Chandran to the court and enquired about the violation of the court order and sought to know why contempt proceedings should not be initiated for alleged violation of their order.

The Bench posted the matter for hearing on October 19.

The photographs showed a large number of people walking on the synthetic athletic tracks of the stadium, part of the natural turf in disarray while the news item alleged that that the police band had also marched on the track while a stage had been set up, all in violation of the court order.

In their order on a petition filed by a city advocate N Senthil, the Judges had directed that the synthetic tracks be used only for the rural athletics meet, listed as part of the programme, and that any cultural programme be conducted only on the natural turf area.

While making it clear that the synthetic track should in no way be damaged, they also restricted the number of persons, including artists and security personnel that could be present at any point of time on the turf to 250.

The Judges had also restrained organizers from erecting arches, stages, flagpoles and hoisting of any party flag in the stadium.

The programmes included lanuch of a Rs 250 crore 'farmers social security scheme', by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa and an exhibition at the adjoining indoor stadium.