PANJIM: The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notices to Goa Legislative Assembly Speaker Rajesh Patnekar and ten MLAs who had broken away from the Congress and ‘merged’ their legislative wing with the BJP in July 2019, in a disqualification petition filed by Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC).
A bench comprising Chief Justice S A Bobde, Justices A S Bopanna and MR Shah issued ‘early notice’ returnable within three weeks, on the plea filed by GPCC president Girish Chodankar on June 1.
The Speaker has been made party, after he failed to decide on the disqualification petition filed before him in August 2019, terming the merger as ‘illegal’ and for violating the Supreme Court order with regards to guidelines set for deciding on the petition under the anti-defection law.
Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal appeared on behalf of the petitioner and sought earlier listing of the case.
Addressing media persons, Chodankar said the plea contends that the Speaker has violated the deadline of three months to decide on disqualification which has been set by the Supreme Court in its recent ruling pertaining to Manipur MLA defection issue. “We have brought to the notice of the Apex Court that Speaker has not given justice to his position and had not upheld the constitutional duties,” he said.
“The petition also relied on another Supreme Court order concerning Manipur where due to the delay by the Speaker in deciding the disqualification petition the Supreme Court had declared that a MLA will cease to be a Minister,” Chodankar said.
Further, Chodankar said that the ten respondents 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 petitioner claimed that there is no valid merger in terms of the Tenth Schedule to Constitution, which is presently the only exception/defence to the disqualification. “In the present case there is no merger of the ‘Original Political Party’ i.e. Indian National Congress Party, taken place and the said party is still existing and is duly recognised and consequently there cannot be claim of valid merger as contemplated under Tenth Schedule by respondents,” he stated.
Chodankar said the action of the MLAs, does not amount to a valid merger of political party on account of the fact that a merger could only be of a political party with any other political party. “The legislature party of a political party by itself had no authority or power to merge with any other political party, without the merger of its original political party,” he mentioned.
The petitioners state that even if two-third legislators of a legislative party had agreed to merge, in law there cannot be any merger without merger of the original political party.
