: The Madras High Court onWednesday orally observed whether there was any possibility of opening service centres to undertake repair of home appliances during COVID-19 lockdown and issued notice to the Tamil Nadu government on a PIL seeking the relief.A bench of Justice M Sathyanarayanan and Justice M Nirmal Kumar directed the government to file its reply by May 26.When the plea came up for hearing through video conferencing, the bench orally asked government pleader Jayaprakash Narayan to consider opening of service centers which undertake repair works and posted the matter for further hearing to May 26.Petitioner G Rajesh, an advocate,sought a direction to the government to keep open home appliances shops, including the service centres and connected e-commerce portals with respect to retail shopping during the COVID19 lockdown.He submitted that appliances such as gas stove,water purifier, refrigerator, mixer- grinder, wet-grinder,ceiling and table fan and AC are necessary for day-to-day life and also hospitals and laboratories were in need of many of these.Since service centres were also closed in view of the lockdown, repair and maintenance of such appliances had been stalled.Hence, the petitioner sought a direction to keep open the service centres of these appliances with application of social distancing and other regulations of the national lockdown, which is in force till May 3.
