Team Herald
PANJIM: The High Court of Bombay at Goa on Thursday disposed of writ petition filed by former Congress president Girish Chodankar and upheld the order of the Assembly Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar dismissing his disqualification petition against eight rebel Congress MLAs who had defected to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in September 2022.
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During the hearing, the petitioner’s counsel Adv Abhijit Gosavi submitted that the issues raised in the present writ petition were already covered by the decision given by this Court in another writ petition filed by Chodankar against the Speaker’s verdict against another 10 Congress who too broke away and merged with the BJP during previous term i.e. in July 2019.
Hence, Adv Gosavi did not wish to raise any other issues except the ones which were raised and answered in the previous writ petition filed in 2021 and which is challenged before the Supreme Court. Thus the Court dismissed the petition for the same reasons mentioned in the previous writ petition.
Later, the petitioner and his counsel Adv Gosavi stated that they were now free to approach the Apex Court to seek definitive interpretation of the disqualification laws outlined in the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution. They expressed their gratitude to the High Court for disposing the writ petition within 25 days of filing it.
Chodankar said that since the Speaker delayed in disposing his disqualification petition for two years, he was constrained to escalate the matter to the High Court and the Supreme Court seeking speedy disposal of the matter. “My goal is to put an end to the illegal defection motivated by the pursuit of power and money,” he said.
Chodankar had prayed to set aside the order dated November 1, 2024 passed by the Speaker dismissing his disqualification petition against eight rebel party MLAs who defected to the BJP on September 14, 2022.
Chodankar had approached the High Court after the Supreme Court last month refused to entertain his special leave petition (SLP) against the Speaker’s order on eight MLAs and advised the petitioner to approach the High Court for redressal under Article 226 of the Constitution.
Meanwhile, another writ petition filed by Dominic Noronha who had also challenged the Speaker’s order dismissing his disqualification petition against eight rebel Congress MLAs has been listed for hearing by the High Court on January 22.
Noronha had prayed to quash and set aside the Speaker’s order dated October 14, 2024, contesting that the judgment was based on complete misreading, misconstruction and misinterpretation of the Paragraph 4 of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution.
