PANJIM/NEW DELHI: Goa Legislative Assembly Speaker Rajesh Patnekar on Thursday informed the Supreme Court that due to the COVID-19 outbreak-enforced lockdown and the worsening situation thereafter, no hearing was conducted in the disqualification petition filed against ten MLAs who had defected from the Congress and two from the MGP to the BJP, last year.
The disqualification petitions filed against the 12 MLAs will come up for hearing before the three-judge bench of the Apex Court on Friday.
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The petitioners had contended that the Speaker has violated the deadline of three months to decide on a disqualification petition, which has been set by the Supreme Court in a recent ruling pertaining to a Manipur MLA’s defection issue.
The Apex Court had issued notice to the Speaker and 10 MLAs who had defected from the Congress in the disqualification petition filed by Congress president Girish Chodankar on June 16; while the petition against two MLAs who had defected from MGP and filed by Ramakrishna Dhavalikar was admitted, last week, under the anti-defection law.
Sources said that the Speaker in his affidavit before the Court has said that due to the COVID pandemic, his office was not in position to hear the disqualification petitions since March and hence sought further time to decide on the matter.
The petitioners have maintained that the MLAs have incurred disqualification under Article 191(2) of the Constitution read with para 2 of the Tenth Schedule and are liable to be disqualified as Member of the Legislative Assembly.
The case had actually been listed on August 7, but Chodankar got it advanced to Friday from the 3-judge Bench of Chief Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian. The same Bench had also tagged to the case on Monday the other disqualification petition of Dhavalikar for considering both together.
The Court registry, however, said it has not received the affidavit of the Speaker in Chodankar’s case to proceed further.
