Madras HC extends ban on Minister criticizing milk manufacturers

The High Court of Madras has extended an existing ban on Tamil Nadu Milk & Dairy Development Minister Rajenthira Balaji from criticizing milk manufacturing firms.

A few months back, Balaji had accused all private milk manufacturing firms of making adulterated milk. Stating that only the State-manufactured ‘Aavin’ milk was pure, he accused private firms such as Dodla, Hatsun, Vijay, etc. of making adulterated milk mixing cancer-inducing chemicals at will so as to earn profit.

The milk manufacturing firms didn’t take kindly to the Minister’s criticism and moved the High Court of Madras demanding a compensation of Re.1 crore from the Minister for damaging their reputation. While taking up the case, the High Court of Madras restrained the Minister from commenting or making criticism about the milk firms.

When the case was taken up yesterday by the Court during its next spell of hearing, the Court extended the existing ban on the Minister from speaking or commenting about milk-manufacturers. The Court further ordered the private milk firms to process their milk and other products to laboratory tests for quality and inform the results of those tests to the Court within three months’ time.