Chennai: Chief Government Whip S Rajendran met Speaker P Dhanapal at the Secretariat today to discuss the next course of action following the resignation of Sports Development Minister P Balakrishna Reddy after his conviction in a 1998 case for damaging public properties that could see him spending time in jail for three years.

Rajendran met the Speaker before the Assembly session began. The meeting which lasted five minutes was done to instruct the Speaker to announce publicly in the Assembly that the Hosur constituency held by Balakrishna Reddy as vacant, sources said.
According to rules, this has to be informed officially to the Election Commission also and a by-election has to be conducted within six months in the Hosur constituency.

Hours after he was sentenced to three years rigorous imprisonment by a special court on Monday, Balakrishna Reddy resigned from the Edappadi K Palaniswami Cabinet. According to laws, in view of the conviction, the Minister stands automatically disqualified of being an MLA as per the provisions governing statutory disqualification of the Representation of People Act.

However, allowing a memo moved by Reddy, trial judge J Santhi suspended the sentence enabling him to prefer appeal in the Madras High Court and tender a formal resignation. Reddy submitted his resignation to Chief Minister Palaniswami who forwarded it to Governor Banwarilal Purohit who has accepted it. His portfolio of Youth Welfare and Sports Development has been handed over to School Education Minister K A Sengottaiyan.

The issue pertains to a case registered in 1998 under the Tamilnadu Public Property (Prevention of damage and loss) Act for allegedly pelting government buses with stones and damaging them during a rally against illicit liquor in Hosur. Reddy was a member of the BJP then.

More politicos to follow?
The Special Court for cases against sitting and former MLAs and MPs which is barely four-months-old, has already earned a fearsome reputation for itself. Last month, it convicted a former DMK MLA M Rajkumar and handed down a 10-year jail term and on Monday, it dealt a severe blow to the AIADMK government by convicting Reddy.

Politicians like K N Nehru, who has about 10 cases listed against him, Coonoor MLA Shanthi Ramu, whose case is pending since May 2009, and former MLA Ravichandran, who faces murder charges, along with offenses punishable under the Arms Act and the Explosives Substances Act, are under the magnifying lens of the Special Court.