PANAJI
The Supreme Court of India has issued notice to the state and central agencies including the office of the Speaker in the petition filed by former GPCC President Girish Chodankar challenging the order of the High Court which dismissed the Congress petition seeking disqualification of the ten Congress MLAs who jumped ship to the BJP claiming that they being two-third majority were protected from the anti-defection law.
The special leave petition filed by Chodankar, the former President of Goa Pradesh Congress Committee, came up before the Supreme Court bench Justice M R Shah and Justice B V Nagarathna on Friday.
P Chidambram, Sr Adv Vivek Tankha, a Congress MP who argued the case before the High Court, appeared on behalf of Chodankar, along with Ujjawal Anand Sharma and others.
The Congress submitted before the Court that the present matter under consideration before the Supreme Court was of great importance even though a fresh Legislative Assembly is now in place.
As per the senior counsels appearing on behalf of Chodankar, the issue concerning the interpretation of para 4 of the Schedule X of the Constitution of India has not been settled owing to multiple conflicting judgements passed by various High Courts, more particularly High Court of Bombay and High Court of Punjab and Haryana.
“Moreover, since the present matter does not entail lengthy deliberation upon the underlying facts and circumstances, the same is ripe for the Supreme Court to finally bring finality to the issue and settle the position of law regarding disqualification owing to defections under the Xth Schedule. This will be a landmark judgement once disposed of by SC resolving a long-pending question of law as to whether the Legislative wing of a party can merge into another political party?” Chodankar told the media.
After hearing the Senior Counsels at length, the Supreme Court has been pleased to issue notice upon the respondents in the said matter.
The matter has now been listed for 15.11.2022 for further consideration.
The Bombay High Court at Goa in February this year dismissed petitions filed by the Congress and the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) who had challenged the decision of the Speaker to reject their pleas for disqualification of the 10 (of 15) Congress and two (of three) MGP MLAs who defected to the BJP without first resigning as MLAs.
The Congress party in its plea had argued that for a merger to be valid under the anti-defection law it needs to satisfy the “twin test” of both “the merger of the original political party and two-thirds members of the legislature party agreed with such merger.”
The High Court, however, agreed with the view put forth by the Advocate General, who, arguing in defence of the Speaker, had said that no sooner two-thirds of the legislators switched sides it constituted a “deemed merger” even if the original political parties didn’t merge.
The matter has now been posted for November this year.
