The Calcutta high court on Tuesday said that the West Bengal assembly speaker Biman Banerjee should have first decided the petition to disqualify Mukul Roy under the anti-defection law before appointing him as chairman of the assembly’s public accounts committee, as it ordered the speaker to produce the record of the action taken on the disqualification petition filed in June.
In a 69-page strongly-worded verdict, a bench led by acting chief justice Rajesh Bindal rejected the argument that the court did not have jurisdiction over actions of the speaker, underlining that the court would have been debarred from entertaining the petition if it was a case of “procedural irregularities”. But “it is a case of blatant illegality,” the bench also comprising justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj, said. HT has reviewed a copy of the order.
The court set October 7 as the deadline for the speaker to place the action taken by him. “In case of failure, this court will decide further course of action to be taken in the matter”.
The speaker apparently “worked on dictates” and failed to “discharge his constitutional duty coupled with established admitted constitutional conventions, the high court said on a petition by BJP MLA Ambika Roy. Ambika Roy challenged Mukul Roy’s appointment as assembly’s PAC chairman on July 9. Mukul Roy, who joined the BJP in 2017, returned to the TMC on June 11 but did not resign from the BJP.