Court adjourns Karunanidhi defamation case to March 10

Police had a tough time controlling the crowd, a lot of them party advocates.

Karunanidhi’s son and party Treasurer M K Stalin, daughter and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi besides senior party leaders T R Baalu, Dayanidhi Maran, Duraimurugan and Arcot Veerasamy, were also present.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has moved a defamation case against Karunanidhi and and Murasoli Editor Selvam.

Tension prevailed in the court till the leader left the court hall as few party cadres videographed and took pictures of the proceedings using their mobile phones. AIDMK has maintained that Mr Karunanidhi will be chief minister for a sixth term if the party wins in Assembly elections.

Karunanidhi appeared in a Chennai court earlier today in a defamation case filed against him. “He has appeared to the court in response to summon issued to him in the defamation case filed by the Chief Minster. Today he appeared before (the Principal Sessions court) to tell the people what is going on”, DMK Organising Secretary R S Bharathy told PTI. When reporters asked him if he wanted other opposition parties, against whom similar cases are pending, to rally under him against the ruling AIADMK and whether he would invite them, he said “I don’t want to compel them”. “I will abide by that”, he said.

The issue pertains to Karunanidhi quoting from an article in Tamil bi-weekly Ananda Vikatan’s November 25, 2015 issue on the matter.

The City Public Prosecutor had alleged that Karunanidhi wrote an article in “Murasoli” about the AIADMK Government’s performance in the last four years, which per se was defamatory.