K'taka crisis: SC to take up plea by rebel MLAs today

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider a plea by five more Karnataka rebel MLAs, who have joined the 10 disgruntled legislators from the ruling JD(S)-Congress government to seek a direction to Assembly Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar to decide on their resignations.

The top court is scheduled to take up the matter on Tuesday, as the Speaker, along with Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, had questioned the maintainability of the writ petitions by the rebels.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi on Monday mentioned the impleading application filed by MLAs K Sudhakar, Roshan Baig, M T B Nagaraj, Muniratna and Anand Singh in the joint writ petition filed by Pratap Gouda Patil and nine others. He urged the court to take up the application along with the writ petition.

On Friday, the Speaker maintained that since disqualification proceedings were also pending against some of the rebel MLAs, a direction cannot be issued to decide on their resignations.

The court had then ordered status quo on the 10 MLAs.

It had said some weighty issues had arisen in the matter, besides the question as to the “kind and extent of the directions that should be issued by a constitutional court to another constitutional functionary, which in the present case happens to be the Hon’ble Speaker of the Assembly”.