Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Thursday issued a notice to the Speaker of Telangana Assembly on petitions seeking direction to the Speaker to expedite hearing of applications pending before him for disqualification of MLAs of the Congress.
A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Dilip B. Bhosale and Justice S.V. Bhatt was hearing petitions by the TD and Congress leaders of Telangana seeking directions to the Speaker and chairman to expedite hearing and dispose of the petitions pending before them.
E. Dayakar Rao, Telangana TD floor leader, moved a plea stating that he had moved the petition before the Speaker seeking disqualification of three TD MLAs, Talasani Srinivas Yadav, Teegala Krishna Reddy and Challa Dharma Reddy. Congress MLA, Sampath Kumar said he filed a petition before the Speaker to disqualify Kale Yadaiah, D.S. Redya Naik, G. Vittal Reddy and K. Kanakaiah for joining the TRS without resigning from the Congress.
The counsel for the petitioner placed certain judgments of the Supreme Court before the bench and contended that as per the apex court ruling the Speaker has to take a decision on a disqualification petition within three months from the date of its filing.
K. Ramakrishna Reddy, advocate general opposed the contentions and said that he has to look into the orders cited by the counsel before expressing his views.
He said that the petitioner’s counsel earlier worked as standing counsel to the Speaker of erstwhile AP and at that time when similar matters had come up for hearing before the court, the counsel had argued that there was no time frame prescribed for the Speaker to take a decision on disqualification petitions. Now he is arguing that the Speaker has to decide the matter within a time frame.
During the hearing the AG informed the bench that he is not appearing for the Speaker, he appeared before the single judge in the same matter only to assist the court.
The petitioner’s counsel took exception on the submissions of the AG and placed the docket proceedings dated March 3, 2015 in which the bench noted that the AG has agreed to receive notice on behalf of the Speaker.
The bench decided to issue notice again to the Speaker as there was no clarity in the proceedings whether the notice was served to the Speaker or not.
While asking the petitioners counsel to serve notice to the Speaker, the bench made a proposal before the petitioners and respondents that it cannot direct the Speaker to expedite hearing, but it can only make a request to the Speaker for the speedy disposal of the disqualification petitions.
If both the parties agree to the proposal it could hear the case again after two weeks.
