Country’s apex court refused to pass an order on a plea to list petitions filed by 17 disqualified MLAs from Karnataka. Former Speaker of Karnataka legislature Ramesh Kumar had disqualified the legislators under the anti-defection law.
Justice N.V. Ramana while hearing the petitions asked senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi “It will come. What is the urgency?”. Rakesh Dwivedi is representing the legislators. He told the court that the case was originally listed for the hearing on September 16 but it was deleted.
The disqualified leaders of the Congress–JD(s) coalition had approached the court seeking relief in the matter. They are demanding to quash the orders of their disqualification by KR Ramesh Kumar dated July 28, 2019, since their resignations were “genuine and voluntary” in nature. The filed plea claimed that the leaders had submitted their resignations themselves on July 6.
Their petition has argued that the Speaker’s move to disqualify them is arbitrary and ungenuine. The leaders claimed that this is violative of their fundamental rights under Article 14 and Article 19 of the Indian Constitution. Rule 202 of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly along with Article 190 of the Constitution says that a member can deliver resignation signed in his own hand. And only Speaker is the sole authority to satisfy himself about genuineness and voluntariness of the resignation.
The name of disqualified legislators include Byrati Basavraj, Anand Singh, R Roshan Baig, Muniratna, K Sudhakar, MTB Nagaraj, Pratap Gouda Patil, Shrimant Patil, Ramesh Jarkiholi, BC Patil, Shivaram Hebbar, ST Someshekhar, Mahesh Kumatahalli and R Shankar from the Congress and JD(S) legislators AH Vishwanath, Gopalaiah and Narayana Gowda.
Previously, Supreme Court had said that the registrar of the court will look into the urgent listing of pleas filed by the disqualified legislators of Karnataka assembly.
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