NEW DELHI: A Congress petition for disqualification of 12 MLAs who defected to the BJP at last came on board on Monday after nearly five months of adjournments without any hearing.
A Bench of Chief Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian heard counsel of both sides and ordered that the main writ petition of Goa Congress president Girish Chodankar be listed for hearing in the second week of February beginning February 8.
The computer-generated tentative date for hearing is February 8. The court was hearing an application by Chodankar for an early hearing, which was disposed of in view of the court fixing the hearing after a month.
The Congress side was represented by senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Vivek Tankha, both Rajya Sabha members of the party, and Gourab Banerjee, while Goa Assembly Speaker Rajesh Patnekar was represented by former attorney general and senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi.
Sibal argued that but for the application for urgent hearing, the Speaker would have avoided a decision on the disqualification until the present Assembly completes its full term until early 2022. The Chief Justice agreed to his submissions on an early hearing of the petition to prevent a fait accompli.
Chodankar’s petition seeks a direction to the Speaker to disqualify the MLAs who defected to the BJP en masse, alleging that he was sitting over his application to take action under the anti-defection law.
