Decide within a week or face contempt: SC to Speaker
Hyderabad: The Supreme Court on Monday issued a notice to Telangana Assembly Speaker Gaddam Prasad asking him to decide within a week on the disqualification of 10 BRS MLAs. The apex court has said that it is for the Speaker whether to decide the matter or face contempt of court.
Three different petitions pertaining to the disqualification of 10 BRS MLAs for defecting to the Congress came up before the bench of Chief Justice BR Gavai, Justice Vinod Chandran and Justice NV Anajaria in the Supreme Court on Monday. These petitions include a BRS plea against the MLAs in which the Supreme Court on July 31 had asked the Speaker to take a decision within three months. The three-months’ time ended on October 31, but the Speaker could not complete the hearing of all the MLAs. The Speaker’s office had also filed a miscellaneous petition seeking some more time. This petition was earlier listed for November 14, and another petition was filed by the BRS working president KT Rama Rao urging the apex court to act against the Speaker under contempt for not taking a decision on the defections within the prescribed time limit.
The Chief Justice expressed displeasure over the conduct of the Speaker. He warned: “It is for the Speaker to decide the matter or face the contempt of the court. Finish it by next week or face contempt. He has to decide where he wants to spend his New Year’s Eve. We have already told that the Speaker doesn’t enjoy constitutional immunity when considering the matters under the 10th Schedule.” The senior advocate arguing on behalf of the Speaker, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, assured that the Speaker would decide within two weeks.
The Speaker has so far issued notices to 10 MLAs of BRS who are facing defection charges. Out of them, eight have responded and appeared before the Speaker for hearing. Along with the hearing, the cross examination was also completed by the Speaker. However, the two other MLAs, Danam Nagender and Kadiyam Srihari, did not respond to the Speaker’s notice. It will be interesting now to see what the fate of these two MLAs would be as the Supreme Court had asked the Speaker to act within two weeks.
Along with the BRS leader KP Vivekanand, P Kaushik Reddy, KT Rama Rao, BJP leader A Maheshwar Reddy had also filed petitions in the High Court against the defection of 10 MLAs stating that if no action is taken, there is a scope for more defections. The defecting MLAs and state government questioned the maintainability of the writ petition, arguing that the court lacked jurisdiction to issue a writ of mandamus against the Speaker to decide on the disqualification pleas. BRS MLA from Huzurabad Paidi Kaushik Reddy moved the Supreme Court challenging the order of the Telangana High Court’s division bench which had set aside directions given by a single judge to the Speaker, asking him to act against it.