Disqualification: SC refuses urgent hearing

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to consider a plea for urgent listing made by Karnataka's disqualified MLAs on their petitions against the then Speaker's orders rejecting their resignations and declaring them as ineligible to be legislators again for the term of the 15th Karnataka Legislative Assembly.

A bench of Justices N V Ramana and Ajay Rastogi declined to give any specific date of hearing on a request by a counsel, Subhranshu Padhi, on behalf of the disqualified legislators.

On August 12 also, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi had mentioned the matter. The court had then said the plea for urgent listing would be examined by the registrar.

All 17 disqualified MLAs had filed the writ petitions. They may again press for urgent hearing on Tuesday.

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 K R Ramesh 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 have filed their separate writ petition questioning the validity of the Speaker's order to disqualify them.

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

Two rebel Congress leaders Ramesh L Jarkhiholi and Mahesh Kumathalli had earlier filed their petition against the orders.