niece of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa and legal heir of J. Deepa. File | Photo credit: The Hindu
The Madras High Court on Wednesday (October 15, 2025) directed the niece and legal heir of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa J. Deepa to also implead her brother J. Deepa as one of the respondents in the writ petition she filed challenging the refund of income tax and wealth tax by ₹19.6.
Justice C. Saravanan gave the petitioner time till November 3, 2025 to enforce her brother as Income Tax Department Standing Counsel AP Srinivas told the court that though both the siblings were declared legal heirs of the former chief minister, Mr. Deepak did not challenge the recovery proceedings.
The court was informed that the recovery officer had initially issued an order on July 23, 2025 to recover a much larger amount of ₹36.56 crore, which was estimated to be arrears to be paid by the former chief minister from the assessment years 1991-92 to 2011-12, from the two legal heirs who inherited her.
Ms. Deepa filed the first writ petition on 7 August 2025 challenging the recovery on the ground that any notice, assessment or recovery proceeding issued on behalf of the deceased was wholly void and unenforceable ab initio and that the petitioner could not be termed a default judge.
She also claimed that she was not provided with any calculation sheet even though many tax case appeals related to her aunt’s tax levies are still pending. However, during the pendency of this injunction, the Revenue Enforcement Officer issued a revised recovery order on 4 August 2025 for a lower amount of ₹13.69 crore.
Justice Saravanan took cognizance of the revised order of restitution and dismissed the first writ petition of Ms. Deepa on 18 September 2025 as she had become intractable. Therefore, she has now filed a second suit challenging the revised collection order on several grounds.
Counsel for the appellant told the Court that his client had no means of verifying the correctness of the tax arrears claim as she had no access to her aunt until her death on 5 December 2016 and that she was declared one of the legal heirs by the High Court on 27 May 2020.
Even after the court’s order, the Chennai collector handed over the possession of Jayalalithaa’s Poes Garden bungalow to the legal heirs till December 10, 2021, and an inventory taken at the premises did not yield any documents related to tax charges, counsel told the court.
When the judge said that the former chief minister’s chartered accountant should know the details and should even know her username and password to access her records on the income tax portal, the counsel replied that the chartered accountant had also died during COVID-19.
Since the other legal heir was also a necessary party to this court proceeding, the judge granted time to the petitioner to enforce her brother and asked Mr. Srinivas to take notice on behalf of the Revenue Officer.
Published – 15 Oct 2025 20:32 IST
