Disqualified MLAs to wait longer for a hearing in SC

Their petitions to come up for hearing on Sep 11 get deleted

The wait for Karnataka's 17 disqualified MLAs for a hearing in the Supreme Court seemed to be getting longer as their writ petitions against the then Speaker's decision, scheduled to come up for consideration on September 11, got deleted.

A bench of Justices N V Ramana and Ajay Rastogi was to take up the batch of petitions, filed last month, on September 11. However, a final update on the Supreme Court's website showed that the batch of petition was removed from the list of cases.

A lawyer connected to the matter said the petitioners may mention the matter again on Wednesday, seeking an urgent listing. The reasons for the deletion of the case was immediately unknown.

It was due to these disqualified MLAs whose rebellion led to the fall of the JDS-Congress government and subsequent installing of BJP in power in Karnataka. All of them were disqualified by then Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar, who also declared them as ineligible to be legislators again for the term of the 15 Karnataka Legislative Assembly.

All 17 disqualified MLAs had filed the writ petitions.

In one-joint petition, Pratap Gouda Patil, B C Patil, A S Hebbar, S T Somashekar, B A Basavaraja and Muniratna contended the Speaker's orders passed on July 28 was “wholly illegal, arbitrary and malafide” as he arbitrary rejected their resignations holding those as not voluntary and genuine.

They contended they had resigned on July 6 but Speaker Kumar went on to disqualify them on the basis of a “wholly misconceived” petition filed by the Congress party on July 10.

Three JDS members A H Vishwanath, K Gopalaiah and K C Narayanagowda also filed their separate writ petition questioning the validity of the Speaker's order to disqualify them.

Similarly other disqualified MLAs – Roshan Baig, Anand Singh, MTB Nagaraj, Dr K Sudhakar, Shrimanth B Patil and R Shankar – also urged the court to quash the orders passed by the Speaker.