THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2024
Team Herald
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has further deferred the cases of disqualification of a dozen MLAs of the Goa Assembly slated on Monday. No new date has been fixed.They were first listed on March 1 and then shifted to March 8 as per an order of the Bench comprising Chief Justice Sharad Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian on February 20 to list the matter in the first week of March.The Court had deferred the hearing on Solicitor General Tushar Mehta stating that the Assembly Speaker has listed the disqualification applications for hearing on February 26. Speaker Rajesh Patnekar completed the hearing of the two applications on February 26, but reserved his ruling that has not come till date.The two petitions before the top court relate to the defection of 10 Congress MLAs to the BJP after the Assembly elections and two MLAs of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) also defecting to the BJP. The two defections enabled the BJP to increase its strength in the Assembly.
The BJP was in a minority in the 2017 elections, but its strength swelled with the defections to form the government.In the last hearing on February 12, the lawyers of Goa Congress president Girish Chodankar had contended that his petition will become infructuous if its hearing is continued to be put on hold since the next Assembly elections are just a year away in March 2022.
