Committee to regulate e-passes will be set up, TN govt tells HC

Committee to regulate e-passes will be set up, TN govt tells HC

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai: 12.08.2020

Facing flak for its epass regimen, the Tamil Nadu government assured the Madras high court that it would set up a committee to regulate issuance of e-passes for travel.

Recording the submission, a division bench of Justice M M Sundresh and Justice R Hemalatha said, “We only add that the committee to be formed shall also address the issue of the bogus and misuse of the e-passes.” It said regulatory procedures must be followed to avoid such misuses, the judges said.

A submission to this effect was made by a government counsel before the bench when a related case came up for hearing before on Tuesday. He said the chief minister had also made a similar statement while addressing the media recently.

Directing the government to file a detailed response in three weeks, the judges then posted the case to August 27 for further hearing.

The court issued the interim direction on a PIL moved by P Sesubalan Raja seeking direction to the government to regulate and streamline issuance of e-passes.

He alleged that people who have to travel even within the state for their work or other pressing needs could not do so due to the difficulties in getting e-passes from the authorities concerned.

In most cases, application for such passes are rejected immediately even without verifying the documents attached and people who had to travel for medical emergencies were unable to get such passes, the petitioner said.

Such e-passes are issued only on three grounds – medical emergency, marriage and funeral. But in view of the alleged difficulties in getting epasses, particularly for work related travel, the Chennai Corporation recently eased the restrictions and added a few more categories to obtain the passes. The additional grounds would include workrelated travel and travel to attend job interviews.