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Goa Speaker given 3 weeks by SC to reply in Cong MLAs disqualification case
In July 2019, ten of the 15 Congress legislators in Goa announced that they were ‘merging’ with the BJP citing a provision in the law that if more than 2/3rd of the legislators of a political party ‘merge’ with another, it will not attract provisions of the anti-defection law.
Congress was “compelled to move the Supreme Court” after the Goa Assembly Speaker refused to schedule timely hearings on the issue of disqualification proceedings against 10 of its legislators who defected to the BJP last year, party’s state party president Girish Chodankar said on Tuesday.
After hearing the Congress petition, the apex court on Tuesday issued notice, returnable within three weeks, to Goa Assembly Speaker Rajesh Patnekar.
The 10 MLAs have also been made respondents in the case.
Speaking to media persons, Goa Congress president Girish Chodankar said, “the party was compelled to move to the SC after the Speaker refused to schedule timely hearings, despite being reminded that Supreme Court guidelines stipulate that disqualification petitions need to be disposed of with an outer limit of nine months.
“In the Manipur matter there are clear guidelines of the Supreme Court to all the legislative assemblies and the speaker that any petition regarding disqualification considering the duration of the legislative assembly or of parliament is just five years, the outer limit to dispose of the petition is just three months,” Chodankar said.
“It has been almost nine months since we filed this (petition) before the Speaker and we expected that it will be disposed of quickly. But our Speaker decided to keep the disqualification pending. He has not given respect to SC guidelines despite us reminding him in February,” he added.
“We are pleased that the SC issued notice to the Speaker and 10 defected MLAs. The notice is returnable after three weeks. Our petition was represented by Kapil Sibal,” he added.
Besides seeking directions to the Speaker that he dispose of the matter within one month, the Congress petition has also sought that the 10 MLAs concerned be restrained to officiate as MLAs and ministers.
In July 2019, ten of the 15 Congress legislators announced that they were ‘merging’ with the BJP citing a provision in the law that if more than 2/3rd of the legislators of a political party ‘merge’ with another, it will not attract provisions of the anti-defection law.
The Congress has contended that the ‘merger’ of 10 of its MLAs into the BJP was not a merger of parties as envisaged by the 10th schedule of the constitution.
