In Truth

This is with reference to the letter by Subramanian Swamy (EPW, 14 March 2009) in response to my commentary (28 February 2009) on the police violence in the Madras High Court. Swamy says: “I had, in fact, come to court because my name was listed in the Court Cause List of that day (17 February) for hearing of my Application for being made a party in a Writ Appeal matter”.He has been ped-dling this story elsewhere too. However, the cause list of the Madras High Court for 17 February 2009 is available for anyone to check and Swamy’s name does not ap-pear anywhere in that. The fact is that Swamy came to the court that day, pur-portedly, to make a mention to “implead” himself in Writ Appeal No181/2009 (listed as Item 54 in Court Hall 3 before the Division Bench consisting of Justices P K Mishra and K Chandru). Now the important fact is that the Writ Appeal was listed that day for admission and the procedure, insofar as “implead” applica-tions are concerned, is to take it up only after the main petition is admitted. And hence Swamy’s application was not evenlisted and it is false to say that his name was listed in the cause list for 17 February2009.

In any case, I had not talked about the cause list for 17 February 2009 in my arti-cle when I made that point about Swamy not having any specific purpose to be in the court. I had specifically mentioned 19February 2009 in that context.