PANAJI
Goa Legislative Assembly Speaker Rajesh Patnekar on Friday
dismissed a past application of Congress State president Girish Chodankar's lawyer Abhijit Gosavi which had urged him to put on record a resolution of the state Congress Committee related to the disqualification of the 10 MLAs.
During the hearing on Friday, Chodankar urged Patnekar to deliver the order at the earliest.
Emerging from the Speaker's chamber after the hearing, Chodankar accused Patnekar of dragging his feet and said that the Speaker had crossed the three months deadline set by the Supreme Court of India to decide the matter of disqualification of elected representatives.
"We have requested the Speaker to deliver judgement as early as possible," Chodankar said.
Chodankar had filed the disqualification petition before the Speaker in 2019 on grounds that the split by the 10 MLAs and subsequent merger into the BJP was violative of provisions of the Xth Schedule of the Constitution.
Chodankar had also moved the Supreme Court seeking directions to the Speaker to speed up hearing the disqualification petition case.
"The Supreme Court's outer limit of three months has lapsed. The Speaker is not fulfilling his Constitutional mandate. We do not expect anything positive from the Speaker. The Speaker has to dispose off this petition in whatever way he wants, whether in our favour or not in our favour. He is protecting MLAs, who conducted the alleged merger. Today's hearing was a time consuming exercise," Chodankar added.
