'Assembly Speaker cannot serve notice on MLAs'

Addressing a news conference here on Friday, Khader said that as per the rules, the  Chief Whip in the State Assembly should complain to the Speaker first. The Speaker can issue notice only on the basis of this complaint to the MLAs.

“The Assembly Speaker is the custodian of all the 224 MLAs in the State Assembly. Unfortunately in Karnataka, the Speaker  is acting as a custodian to BJP MLAs exclusively,” he added.

“The notice served states that 14 MLAs including me helped five independent MLAs, who were disqualified, to enter the Assembly hall. One should know that the five independent MLAs had already entered the Assembly hall when we reached there,” Khader clarified and added that the Congress MLAs were protesting only to urge the Speaker to convene the Assembly again since the vote of confidence was not tabled properly.

He questioned as to why the Speaker did not raise the issue in the session held on October 14 if they had behaved in an unruly manner.

“The Speaker is playing partisan politics to protect the BJP government. Their ultimate aim is to safeguard the BJP government by suspending 14 of us,” Khader charged.

He pointed out that the notice was issued to 14 MLAs on October 20 even though a complaint was submitted to the Speaker by the BJP MLAs on October 11 itself.

Talking about the House Committee set up to probe the issue, Khader said that the Speaker should have set up a committee to probe how police entered the Assembly and why entry was denied to MLAs.