SC tells deposed Arunachal Speaker to establish petition’s maintainability

The Supreme Court on Thursday asked Nabam Rebia, allegedly removed by 14 rebel Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs from the post of Arunachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker, to establish the maintainability of his petition challenging the dismissal of one of his pleas by the Gauhati high court.

“How can you challenge it? This is an administrative order which you are assailing in SLP under Article 136 of the Constitution. You (Kapil Sibal) argue on maintainability,” a Bench comprising Justices JS Khehar and C Nagappan said.

“Tomorrow is the last working day (in the High Court) before the vacation. A democratically elected government will be out,” Rebia’s counsel Sibal said, adding that either this court or a Division Bench of the High Court should hear the matter. “How can you say as to what is coming,” asked the Bench.

Rebia, who has challenged in Gauhati high court various decisions of the Governor and Deputy Speaker, including his removal from the Speaker’s post, alleged the Acting Chief Justice of the High Court “erroneously rejected” his plea, filed on judicial side, in administrative capacity. He had sought recusal of Justice BK Sharma from hearing his plea.

At the outset, the Bench suggested to both the parties that it may “request” the Acting Chief Justice to set up a division bench to hear the matter and the two judges, mentioned in the petition, will not be part of the new Bench. A battery of senior lawyers including AK Desai, L Nageshwar Rao and Vikas Singh, representing Deputy Speaker and political opponents of Rebia, opposed it.

They said nobody was alleging anything against the judge concerned and setting up of a new Bench cannot be done as the Acting Chief Justice of the High Court was the “master of the roaster” who was well within his rights to assign judicial work to a particular Bench.

The Bench then asked Sibal to establish that Rebia’s plea before it is maintainable.

Rebia was removed from the post of the Speaker by 14 rebel Congress MLAs, disqualified by the Speaker, and BJP MLAs on December 16 in an Assembly session presided over by the Deputy Speaker in a Community Hall in Itanagar.