Chennai, March 30: Two public interest pleas filed in Madras High Court today challenged tomorrow’s 12-hour bandh called by the DMK and its allies against the stay on the 27 per cent OBC quota in central educational institutions.

The petitions were heard by a bench of Justices S.J. Mukhophadhya and V. Dhanapalan this evening even as DMK boss and chief minister M. Karunanidhi was doing everything he could to make the bandh a success.

The eleventh-hour dash to court stunned the Tamil Nadu administration, which has already declared Saturday a holiday under the Negotiable Instruments Act and advised airlines and railways to reschedule services in view of the dawn-to-dusk bandh. Cinema halls and commercial entities have also been urged to down shutters.

The judges gave the government’s counsel two weeks to respond to the points raised in the petitions, which primarily question the ruling parties’ right to call a “state-sponsored” shutdown at such a short notice.

Justice Mukhophadhya said the petitions were “rather premature” because there was little documentary proof to suggest that the bandh was official. “Whether it will be a bandh in the sense of a total shutdown or a strike, whether it will be voluntary or people being forced not to go to work, all these can be known only after the action (on Saturday),” he observed.

The petitioners — social workers Ramaswamy and M.S. Sivakumar — said the chief minister had himself announced the bandh after a meeting of the DMK and its allies last night. They alleged that the ruling alliance had even requested the Centre not to run trains and flight services. They cited the verdicts of Kerala High Court and the Supreme Court declaring such bandhs unconstitutional.

Asserting he wasn’t against the OBC quota, Sivakumar said legal options were still open to contest the stay which, after all, is only an interim arrangement till the Centre comes up with fresh data on beneficiaries.

Political reactions to the bandh call were mixed. S. Ramadoss, the PMK leader whose party has a following among the Vanniyars (an OBC), hit the streets today to protest the apex court order.

The Assembly passed a resolution urging the Centre to convene Parliament immediately to discuss the quota impasse. ADMK chief Jayalalithaa expressed shock over the stay, but dubbed the DMK’s bandh call an “eyewash”.