New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam and 10 other AIADMK MLAs for a direction to the Tamil Nadu Speaker to act on the complaint to disqualify them for voting against the confidence motion moved by Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami in February 2017.
A Bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan issued notice on the appeals filed by the DMK MLA R. Sakkarapani challenging the Madras high court order refusing to direct the Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker to act on the complaint.
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 also pleaded that since the Speaker had refused to take action, the court itself should disqualify the 11 MLAs taking note of their conduct in the Assembly. The Bench asked the 11 MLAs to file their response to the appeals.
In its appeal against the April 27 order, R. Sakkarapani of the DMK said the present appeal raises important question of law that needs to be decided by this Court, viz whether when a Speaker of a House abandons his duty to decide disqualification petition, can a Constitutional Court issue a mandamus disqualifying such member of the house under para 2 of the Tenth Schedule of Constitution, if the parameters mentioned therein are met?
The SLP said the admitted/undisputed facts are that the 11 MLAs of the OPS group voted against the trust vote on February 18, 2017. The party did not condone the act of voting of 11 MLAs against the resolution/ whip. On 20.03.2017 the petition for disqualification of these 11 members were filed before the Speaker under Paragraph 2 (1)(b) of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution.
The Speaker despite having found the aforesaid petition in order, did not act and did not issue even the notices and thus abandoned his jurisdiction under Tenth Schedule of the Constitution.
The High Court failed to appreciate that the issue that in case of abandonment of jurisdiction, a Constitutional court could always issue a direction under tenth Schedule of Constitution.
The high court had rejected the petition on the ground that since the question of issuance of Mandamus to the Speaker was pending consideration before this Court it is not possible for the high court to pass orders to disqualify the concerned MLAs. Hence the present appeal to set aside the impugned order and to direct the speaker to act on the complaint.
