The Madras High Court has dismissed as withdrawn a petition challenging the construction of a new Secretariat complex at Pattinapakkam, after the bench said it could not intervene in a government policy decision on where to build the facility.
The petition was filed by advocate Tamilvendan and came before a division bench comprising Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G. Arul Murugan. The petitioner sought permission to withdraw the case after the judges questioned the basis for asking the court to intervene in the project.
During the hearing, the bench referred to a similar challenge concerning the construction of a new Parliament building. The judges said the Supreme Court had refused to entertain that plea in 2022 on the ground that the decision was a matter of government policy.
The Madras High Court also referred to an earlier petition against the construction of a new Secretariat, which it said had been dismissed in 2011. The reference places the Pattinapakkam challenge within a longer pattern of legal objections to the location or construction of government administrative complexes.
The judges questioned the petitioner’s claim that public money was being wasted. “It’s for the government to build wherever they want. Where does the court have the power to direct the government to build at a particular location,” the bench said, according to the report.
The court also observed that the petitioner had not produced material supporting the case. The bench warned that costs could be imposed if similar petitions continued to be filed without adequate grounds. Following the court’s remarks, the petitioner asked to withdraw the plea, and the judges dismissed it as withdrawn.
The order, as reported, does not amount to a judicial assessment of the project’s design, cost, site suitability or construction progress. It records the withdrawal of the challenge after the court indicated that the issue involved a policy decision and that the petition lacked supporting material.
The case highlights the division between executive decision-making on public infrastructure and judicial review. While the government may decide the location of an administrative complex, a challenge can still require documentary grounds if it alleges misuse of public funds or other legal violations. In this matter, the court’s reported remarks focused on the absence of such supporting material and on the limits of its authority to direct the government to choose a particular site.
No further directions on the proposed Pattinapakkam Secretariat complex were reported in the supplied account. The immediate legal development is the dismissal of the petition as withdrawn.
