New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear on November 13 a petition filed by AIADMK MLA S.Semmala for transfer of the writ petition filed by DMK seeking a direction to the Tamil Nadu Speaker to disqualify 11 MLAs of the O. Panneerselvam group for voting against the confidence motion moved by Chief Minister Edapadi Palaniswami in February this year.
A Bench of Justices J. Chelameswar and Abdul Nazeer directed the transfer petition to be listed for hearing on November 13 on a mention’ made by senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi appearing for SemmalaI that the matter required urgent hearing as it involved interpretation of the Constitution on the powers of the Speaker.
Rohatgi also submitted that a similar matter relating to the YSR Congress party’s demand for disqualification of MLAs of AP Assembly was still pending adjudication before a Constitution Bench. He said it would be desirable that the apex court also heard the petition filed by DMK. In his writ petition Mr. Sakkarapani, DMK MLA drew the court’s attention to the inaction of Tamil Nadu speaker against the 11 MLAs and said it was deliberate and mala fide. He said “The speaker has not even issued a notice on the petition for disqualification filed on March 20 against O Panneerselvam and 10 other MLAs of the AIADMK in accordance with provisions of the tenth schedule of the Constitution and the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly (Disqualification on ground of Defection) Rules 1986 for defying the party-line whip issued by the chief government whip S. Rajendran.”
O. Panneerselvam, Aarukutty, Shanmuganathan, Manickam, Manoharan, K. Pandiarajan, Manoranjitham, Saravanan, Chemmalai, Chinnaraj and R. Natraj were the 11 MLAs who voted against the government. Arunkumar, Pollachi MLA abstained from voting. The petitioner argued that if the act of 11 MLAs voting against the whip was not condoned within 15 days of voting, then they would be disqualified on the ground of defection. He said instead of initiating action against the 11 MLAs, the Speaker had disqualified 18 MLAs of the T.T.V. Dinakaran’s camp, who had done nothing against the party whip.
