PANJIM: Goa Assembly Speaker Rajesh Patnekar has held there is valid merger of the Congress Legislature Party into the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and that there is no question of 10 former Congress MLAs giving up their membership of the party to attract disqualification.
In his verdict, a copy of which was furnished to Congress President Girish Chodankar on Tuesday, the Speaker has held that the petitioner does not dispute the position that two-third of the MLAs of Congress Party decided to merge with the BJP.
In August 2019, Chodankar had filed disqualification petition before the Speaker praying for disqualification of 10 rebel MLAs Chandrakant (Babu) Kavlekar, Isidore Fernandes, Nilkant Halarnkar, Jennifer Monserrate, Antonio (Tony) Fernandes, Francis Silveira, Wilfred D’Sa, Clafasio Dias, Filipe Neri Rodrigues and Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate, who joined the BJP in July 2019.
The petitioner had argued that the respondents had voluntarily given up membership of the original political party and that there was no valid merger under Para 4 of the Xth Schedule of the Constitution of India.
The petitioner claimed that the legislature party cannot merge with another political party without the merger of the original political party, which is still in existence and is a recognised party.
There are two pre-requisites for a valid merge i.e original political party should merge with another political party and two-third of the members of the legislature party must agree and both requirements are to be met, the petitioner said.
Chodankar had reiterated that two-third of the legislature party has no authority to merge with another political party and that there must be a decision of the political party coupled with the decision of the two-third of the MLAs of the legislature party. Thus the respondents have attracted disqualification under the Xth Schedule of the Constitution.
On the other hand, the 10 respondents claimed that is a valid merge under the Xth Schedule of the Constitution and therefore they do not incur disqualification. They pointed out that the disqualification petition contains admissions from which it is clear that there has been merger of Goa Congress legislature party into BJP as required and in conformity of the Xth Schedule of the Constitution. Thus there is no cause of action disclosed in the petition.
On April 20, the Speaker had dismissed two disqualification petitions filed by the Congress president Girish Chodankar and MGP legislator Sudin Dhavalikar, who had also sought disqualification of party two former MLAs Babu Ajgaonkar and Deepak Pauskar fort joining BJP.
Meanwhile, both Chodankar and Dhavalikar have decided to challenge the Speaker’s judgement before the Bombay High Court at Goa.
