SC to hear plea of disqualified MLAs today

Ending their wait, the Supreme Court is going to consider on Tuesday a batch of petitions filed by 17 disqualified MLAs of Karnataka against the then Speaker’s order that rejected their resignations and declared them as ineligible to be legislators again for the on-going term of
15 th Legislative Assembly.

After filing their petitions in August, the petitioners – belonging to Congress and JDS – have remained unsuccessful, despite making several attempts to get the matters listed for hearing.

The causelist released on the Supreme Court’s website on Monday showed that as many as 10 writ petitions filed by them would come up for consideration on Tuesday as item number 2 in court number 3 before a bench led by Justice N V Ramana and comprising Justices Mohan M Shantanagoudar and Ajay Rastogi.

On September 12, Justice Ramana had told their counsel that the matter would come up for hearing in due course.

Senior advocates Rakesh Dwivedi, V Giri and Anupam Lal Das had then mentioned the matter on behalf of 17 disqualified MLAs from Karnataka and sought hearing on their petitions.

They said the matter once listed for September 11 got deleted. Notably, the rebellion move by these MLAs had caused fall of the JDS-Congress government and subsequent installing of BJP in power in Karnataka. As a result, all of them were disqualified by then Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar on July 28. All 17 of the disqualified MLAs then filed the writ petitions.