In a big relief to the Telangana MLAs, who defected from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi to the Congress after the last year’s elections, Telangana high court on Friday refused to trespass into the jurisdiction of the legislative assembly speaker in disqualification of defectors.
A bench of chief justice Alok Aradhe and justice J Sreenivas Rao set aside the single judge order of September 9 which directed the legislature secretary to convey within 4 weeks a time frame for adjudicating the disqualification pleas pending before the assembly speaker.
The bench delivered the judgement after hearing the arguments on three appeals filed by state legislature secretary who challenged the order of the single judge and its legal validity in view of the powers the speaker has at a pre-decisional stage.
The bench refused to impose any time frame on the speaker to decide on the disqualification petitions. However, the bench asked the speaker to decide the pleas within a reasonable time.
The chief justice bench said the speaker, as chairman of the tribunal constituted under X schedule of the Constitution, must keep in mind the purpose of this schedule and the resultant anti-defection law.
“The speaker must also keep in mind the tenure of the current assembly and resolve the pending disqualification pleas before him within a reasonable time,” the bench said.
The assembly secretary, in his plea contended that the courts can review its decisions only after its Speaker takes a decision and not before that.
The pending pleas pertain to three legislators – Danam Nagender, Kadiam Srihari and Tellam Venkat Rao who got elected on BRS tickets and later switched loyalties to the Congress without relinquishing their legislator posts.
While BRS filed three separate pleas seeking disqualification of all the three MLAs, the BJP filed a separate plea seeking disqualification of Danam Nagender who contested as Secunderabad Lok Sabha Congress Candidate immediately after getting elected as Khairatabad MLA on a BRS ticket.