PANJIM: Goa Forward Party President Vijai Sardesai has asked the Speaker of Goa Legislative Assembly to stop acting as a henchman of BJP and decide on disqualifications petition pending with him for a year now. Sardesai was reacting to Supreme Court (SC) order on Speakers sitting on disqualification judgements. “We welcome the Supreme Court’s suggestion that an independent mechanism should decide on disqualifications of lawmakers rather than the Speaker,” he said.
In light of the judgment of the SC that the Speaker of the Manipur Assembly should decide on a disqualification petition within 4 weeks, and that 3 months from the date of filing of such petition should be the outer limit within which they should be decided, Sardesai said the Goa Speaker should take up the disqualification petitions pending with him and decide on them immediately. “The petitions filed in May and August of 2019 are still pending and the Speaker should stop acting like a henchman of the BJP and decide on the petitions in a non-partisan manner,” Sardesai said.
