PANJIM: The Supreme Court on Monday adjourned to January 2024, hearing in the special leave petition (Civil) filed by former Congress president Girish Chodankar against eight Congress rebel MLAs, who switched over to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in September last year.
The Court granted time of two weeks for all the respondents including the Assembly Speaker to file their counter affidavits to Chodankar’s petition as requested by counsels on behalf of respondents. After this, two weeks’ time will be granted to the petitioner to file a rejoinder or response to their replies.
However, the matter will be heard after Christmas and winter vacations and is now posted for January 2024. The case was heard before Justice Sanjeev Khanna and Justice S V N Bhatti.
Chodankar has approached the Supreme Court after the Goa Assembly Speaker did not act despite order by the High Court of Bombay at Goa, expecting that the Speaker would decide the disqualification petitions in a time-bound manner.
In May this year, the High Court had disposed Chodankar’s petition stating that since the Speaker is hearing four disqualification petitions, the Court declined to pass any direction to the Speaker to decide Chodankar’s petition within any time-frame but hoped that the Speaker decides his petition as fast as possible.
The petitioner had prayed that the Speaker be directed to decide his disqualification petition against eight Congress rebel MLAs in a time-bound manner more particularly in terms of law laid down by the Supreme Court that disqualification petitions be decided within three months.
Meanwhile, another petition filed by Chodankar challenging the judgment of the High Court dismissing petition seeking disqualification of 10 Congress MLAs, who joined BJP in July 2019, will come up for hearing in the Apex Court on December 8.
The High Court in February 2022 upheld the order of the then Goa Assembly Speaker dismissing the disqualification petition filed against 10 Congress MLAs who had crossed the floor over to the BJP in the Goa legislative Assembly.
