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Goa Congress approaches SC challenging verdict on 10 MLA disqualification plea
Goa Congress chief Girish Chodankar asked the Supreme Court to interpret the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, which deals with defection of lawmakers, in consonance with the spirit and objective of enactment.
PANAJI: The Congress has approached the Supreme Court challenging the decision of the Bombay high court at Goa which ruled in favour of the 10 MLAs who crossed over from the Congress to the BJP.
Goa Congress president Girish Chodankar said the high court ruling, which rejected a plea for disqualification of the legislators, was against the basic spirit of ‘democracy’. Chodankar said the high court’s interpretation will have “serious consequences in respect of the democratic and electoral process in the country and this could lead to a situation wherein political parties would be able to have MLAs in the house without even contesting elections”.
Chodankar asked the Supreme Court to interpret the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution in consonance with the spirit and objective of enactment.
The BJP, which won 13 seats in the 2017 state elections, formed the government with support from the MGP, Goa Forward Party (GFP) and independent MLAs on board. In 2019, 10 of the 15 Congress MLAs and two of three MGP MLAs defected to the BJP.
A February 24 verdict of the Bombay high court at Goa dismissed petitions filed by the Congress and the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) who challenged the assembly speaker’s decision to reject pleas to disqualify the 10 Congress legislators and two MGP MLAs for defecting to the BJP without first resigning as MLAs.
The high court upheld the speaker’s order, ruling that the shift did not attract the disqualification penalty under the anti-defection law since more than two-thirds of the MLAs of the two parties switched parties.
The court said they were protected under section 4 (2) of the Tenth Schedule which states that “the merger of the original political party of a member of a House shall be deemed to have taken place if, and only if, not less than two-thirds of the members of the legislature party concerned have agreed to such a merger.”
The Congress argued that a merger under the anti-defection law has to satisfy the “twin test” of both the merger of the original political party and two-third members of the legislature party agreed with such merger.”
Chodankar said that the Congress was seeking a Supreme Court ruling on whether the merger of the political party is a necessary precondition for the members of a legislature party to claim merger of their legislature party? And more importantly, whether the protection granted under Para 4(1) of Schedule X can be granted to members of the legislature party in the absence of the merger of the original political party.
The Congress has also asked the top court to rule if the legislature party can initiate and conclude the merger of a political party without any reference to and/or role of a political party.
“Once the deeming fiction comes into operation, even when there is, in fact, no merger of the original political party, we have to proceed on the basis that such merger has taken place by operation of the deeming fiction, so long as not less than two-thirds members of the legislature party agree to such a merger,” the high court ruled.
