SC to hear plea by disqualified MLAs on Friday

The Supreme Court is likely to take up on Friday the plea filed by the disqualified MLAs against the then Speaker's decisions rejecting their resignations and declaring them as ineligible to be legislators again for the term of the 15th Assembly.

The petitions filed by as many as 17 MLAs would come up for hearing before a bench presided over by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi on August 9, a lawyer said.

In a joint petition, Pratapgouda Patil, B C Patil, A S Hebbar, S T Somashekar, B A Basavaraja and Muniratna contended that the Speaker's order passed on July 28 was “wholly illegal, arbitrary and mala fide” as he arbitrarily rejected their resignations, holding those as not voluntary and genuine.

They contended that 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 JD(S) members A H Vishwanath, K Gopalaiah and K C Narayanagowda filed a separate writ petition, questioning the validity of the Speaker's order to disqualify them.

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 order passed by the Speaker.

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