Goa Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar should swiftly decide the disqualification petitions against those eight Congress MLAs who jumped into the BJP while betraying the party on whose platform and manifesto they stood, won, and swore allegiance to. They also betrayed the voters who had reposed faith in them to serve them according to the party pledges they made. With the Supreme Court having directed that disqualification petitions should be decided within three months, the Speaker must act in accordance with the law and not demean his noble office.
In 1992 a Constitutional bench of our Supreme Court reiterated extensively on the independence and impartiality of the Speaker’s post. But as we are yet to see a Speaker that is non-partisan, there is a need of setting up a permanent independent authority to decide cases under the anti-defection law in a time bound manner. These eight Congress MLAs who jumped ship for the lure of money and power have been kept languishing in political quarantine without any positions of power. This explains why we end up with low calibre politicians with even lower integrity and honesty.
