SC asks Telangana Speaker to decide on disqualification of 10 MLAs in three months
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Telangana assembly speaker to decide within three months the disqualification petitions against 10 BRS MLAs who had switched allegiance to the ruling Congress, saying political defections have the power to disrupt democracy if not curbed. The top court held that the speaker acts as a tribunal while deciding the pleas for disqualification under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution and consequently does not enjoy “constitutional immunity” against judicial scrutiny. The Tenth Schedule of the Constitution deals with provisions on disqualification on the grounds of defection. Asking the Telangana speaker to decide the disqualification pleas within three months, a bench headed by Chief Justice B R Gavai said, “If we do not issue any directions, it will amount to the Speaker to repeat the widely criticised situation of ‘operation successful, patient dead’.” “Political defections have been a matter of national discourse. If not curbed it has the power to disrupt democracy,” the CJI said while reading out the judgment.
The top court said it is for Parliament to devise a mechanism to deal with the delay at the end of speakers in deciding disqualification pleas. “Though we do not possess any advisory jurisdiction, it is for Parliament to consider whether the mechanism of entrusting the Speaker/Chairman the important task of deciding the issue of disqualification on the grounds of defection is serving the purpose of effectively combating political defections or not,” it said. “If the very foundation of our democracy and the principles that sustain it are to be safeguarded, it is to be examined whether the present mechanism is sufficient or not. At the cost of repetition, we observe that it is for Parliament to take a call on that," the verdict said. It allowed appeals filed by Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leaders, including Padi Kaushik Reddy seeking a direction to the speaker to expeditiously decide disqualification petitions against the defected MLAs. The bench set aside the November 22, 2024 decision of the Telangana High Court’s division bench which had interfered with a prior order of a single judge. “We have referred to various parliamentary speeches, including those by Rajesh Pilot and Devendra Nath Munshi, to emphasise that entrusting disqualification proceedings to the speaker were aimed at avoiding delays that may occur before courts,” it said.
The judgement asked the speaker not to allow the MLAs to prolong the disqualification proceedings. It also asked the speaker to draw adverse inferences if the MLAs protracted proceedings. The verdict, however, rejected the submissions that the top court itself should decide the disqualification petitions, referring to some earlier judgements. It also noted that the speaker did not even issue notice on the disqualification petitions for nearly seven months. "The question therefore we ask ourselves is whether the Speaker has acted in an expeditious manner. Expeditiousness was one of the reasons why Parliament has entrusted the important task of adjudicating disqualification petitions to the Speaker/Chairman. “Non-issuance of notice for a period of seven months and issuing notice only after either the proceedings were filed before this Court or after this Court has heard the matter for the first time can be, by any stretch of imagination, not envisaged as acting in an expeditious manner," it said.
The detailed judgement is awaited.
The top court reserved the verdict on April 3. It had expressed its displeasure over Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy's statement in the assembly that there would be no bypolls, and said he was expected to exercise "some degree of restraint". While one of the pleas in the apex court has challenged the November 2024 order of the Telangana High Court in a matter concerning petitions seeking the disqualification of three BRS MLAs, another petition relates to the remaining seven legislators who defected. A division bench of the high court in November last year said the Assembly speaker must decide the disqualification petitions against the three MLAs within a "reasonable time". The division bench's verdict came on the appeals against the September 9, 2024, order of a single judge. The single judge had directed the secretary of the Telangana Assembly to place the petition seeking the disqualifications before the speaker for fixing a schedule of hearing within four weeks. It had also sought the responses of MLAs Danam Nagender, Venkata Rao Tellam and Kadiyam Srihari in the matter.
