Team Herald
PANJIM: Goa Congress president Girish Chodankar, through his counsel, has urged the Supreme Court for a hearing on the disqualification petition of 10 Congress MLAs for defection to the BJP, on or before July 20. The hearing, which was scheduled on Friday has been postponed to August 7.
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A 3-judge Bench had on June 16 ordered issue of notice, returnable in four weeks, to Speaker Rajesh Patnekar and 10 MLAs, some of whom even became ministers in the BJP government. The Speaker is believed to have not responded within the time frame fixed by the Court that ended on Tuesday.
Advocate Sahil Tagotra, in an application to the Registrar, Supreme Court, on Thursday, has requested that the matter be listed for hearing on or before July 20.
“Any additional delay in listing of the matter, despite specific directions of the Court to list the same, will irreversibly prejudice the petitioner’s case and cause a loss to the public exchequer,” the application stated.
The petitioner has sought the Court’s directions to the Speaker to dispose of the disqualification petition filed in August 2019 within one month. Chodankar has relied on a recent SC ruling that the Speaker should decide such disqualification pleas within a reasonable time frame.
It says the defectors ought to be disqualified under the anti-defection law as defined under the Tenth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. It contends that their claim of split from the party and subsequent merger into the BJP was unconstitutional and not in sync with the provisions of the Schedule. It stressed that the Congress has not split to escape the Tenth Schedule. Ten persons leaving the party cannot be deemed to be a split, the petition asserted.
