SC dismisses Karnataka chief whip plea on disqualification row

A bench of justices Altamas Kabir and Cyriac Joseph said the appeal lacked merit and dismissed it accordingly.

The high court had allowed the plea of Independents, to amend the petition to replace the sentence "the petitioners had never left the BJP" with "the petitioners had not joined the BJP at all".

They had contended that the original sentence was an "inadvertent mistake". The petition filed by BJP's chief whip in the Assembly, D N Jeevaraju and deputy chief whip V T Ravi had so challenged the high court order.

The bench had earlier sought response from the Independents - P M Narendraswamy, Shivaraj Thangadagi, Gulihatti D Shekhar, Venkataramanappa and D Sudhakar.
It asked the high court not to hear the matter till further order.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi had earlier argued on behalf of the BJP chief whip the high court's order allowing the amendment would change the nature of the petition filed by the independents before the High Court.

Senior advocate P P Rao and Jeetender Mahapatra, appearing for the Independent MLAs, maintained that it was a bonafide mistake. The high court had earlier on October 29 upheld the disqualification of the 11 BJP MLAs by the Speaker but a decision regarding the disqualification of the Independent MLA is pending adjudication which is a subject matter of another writ petition.

Justice V G Sabhahit, to whom the division bench headed by chief justice J S Khehar had referred the matter, upheld Speaker K G Bopaiah's order disqualifying the dissident BJP MLAs. The High Court had taken the view that the Speaker's order of disqualification was in accordance with Para 2 (1) (a) of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution--anti-defection law.

The division bench, which included Justice N Kumar, had earlier given a split verdict with Kumar setting aside the Speaker's order. The bench had then referred the matter to the third judge.

BJP, which has been plagued by dissidence in its Karnataka unit, had scraped through in a confidence vote in the Assembly on October 14 after 16 disqualified MLAs, including independents, were kept out of the Assembly.