SC to hear plea by state's disqualified MLAs on Sept 11

The Supreme Court has finally listed a clutch of petitions filed by 17 disqualified MLAs of Karnataka against the then Speaker's order 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 would take up the batch of petitions on September 11, according to the causelist shown on the Supreme Court's website.

Separate petitions filed by Shrimanth Balasaheb Patil, Ramesh L Jarkiholi and another, K Sudhakar, Pratap Gouda Patil and others, A H Vishwanath and others, R Shankar, Anand Singh, N Nagaraju M T B and Roshan Baig are listed as item number 9 before court number three presided over by Justice Ramana.

The listing of the writ petitions came after several attempts made by their counsel last month. The latest attempt was made by them on August 26 by mentioning it for urgent listing.

On August 12, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi had mentioned the matter. The court had then said that the plea for urgent listing would be examined by the Registrar. All the 17 disqualified MLAs had filed the writ petitions.

In a joint petition, Pratap Gouda Patil, B C Patil, A S Hebbar, S T Somashekar, B A Basavaraja and Muniratna contended that the Speaker's orders passed on July 28 was “wholly illegal, arbitrary and malafide” as he arbitrarily 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 - 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, 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 Jarkiholi and Mahesh Kumathalli had earlier filed their petition against the orders.