Telangana Assembly Speaker in legal huddle

Hyderabad: Assembly Speaker S. Madhusudana Chary has convened a meeting for Saturday with advocate-general K. Ramakrishna Reddy to take stock of the notices issued by the Supreme Court in the defection of MLAs’ case filed by Congress MLA S.A. Sampath Kumar.

The apex court on Thursday issued notices to the Speaker and to the seven Congress MLAs who had defected to the ruling TRS to reply within three weeks on the contents of an appeal petition filed by Mr Kumar alleging that the Speaker was not taking any action against the petitions seeking disqualification of the Congress MLAs despite a lapse of two years.

The petitioner had also sought the court’s intervention in directing the Speaker to consider and dispose petitions within a specific time frame.

This is the first time that the Speaker has got notices from the Supreme Court though he had ignored earlier notices by the Hyderabad High Court on the same case.

The petitioner had challenged the High Court order dismissing the petition and had filed an appeal in the apex court.

According to sources, the Speaker now cannot ignore the notices sent by the SC. Though earlier the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Speaker of the united AP Assembly had refused to receive notices citing that Parliament or Legislature was supreme, in this case any attempt to disregard the notices might invite fresh conflict, which at this stage should be avoided.

Sources say if the Speaker decides to receive the notices, he will have to file an affidavit in the apex court. They said the Speaker might convey to the apex court that the rules governing the Legislature or the 10th Schedule of Constitution do not provide any time limit for disposal of the petitions.

Congress predicts bypolls to 25 assembly seats

Reacting to the Supreme Court notices to the Assembly Speaker over the defection of 25 MLAs to the TRS, the Telangana Congress on Thursday was confident that they would be disqualified and by-polls would be held early next year.

“Disqualification of 25 MLAs who defected to TRS is almost certain. The Congress cadre should be prepared for elections early 2017. The Congress has put the entire cadre on alert in view of possible by-elections in early 2017,” said Leader of Opposition in the Telangana State Legislative Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir.

Four MPs, 25 MLAs and 18 MLCs had defec-ted from the Congress, Telugu Desam and the BSP to the TRS. The Congress had lost seven MLAs and one MP.

“Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has made a mockery of Parliamentary democracy. He engineered 47 defections in 27 months. The new state beg-an with repeated violations of Constitution and law," he said.

He added, “By not taking action against the MLAs, the Speaker has proved that he was functioning under the influence of the Chief Minister.”