Chennai, July 10 (PTI): The Madras High Court on Thursday said it would hear on August 12 the pleas of DMK MLAs challenging the show-cause notice in connection with the display of the banned 'gutka' in the Tamil Nadu Assembly in 2017.

The MLAs face privilege proceedings for having brought sachets of the contraband into the Assembly to show how freely the tobacco product was available in the open market.

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On August 28, 2017 the privilege committee of the Assembly initiated the privilege proceedings and issued the show-cause notice to 21 MLAs, including M K Stalin. Challenging the proceeding, the 21 legislators moved the High Court. On September 7 that year, the court stayed further proceedings in the issue. "The term of the legislators as well as the Tamil Nadu Assembly is going to expire soon, and an early date of hearing of the case must be allotted for bringing a logical conclusion," advocate-general Vijay Narayan said. Senior advocates N R Elango and Shanmugasundaram, representing the MLAs, submitted that they would be engaging senior counsels from Delhi and assured the court that they would not seek for any adjournment and would argue the case. Recording the submission, the first bench of Chief Justice AP Sahi and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy agreed to exclusively hear the case on August 12, 2020.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)