The Bombay High Court bench in Goa on Friday issued notices to the state assembly Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar and eight Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs in connection with a disqualification petition filed by former state Congress president Girish Chodankar.
A High Court bench comprising Justices B P Colabawala and Bharat P. Deshpande directed that the respondents should file the reply within two days, even as the next hearing in the case has been scheduled for February 24.
In his petition, Chodankar has urged the Court to decide on the disqualification petition within 90 days.
The Congress had 11 MLAs in the 40 member state assembly following the assembly polls in early 2022, but in September the same year eight MLAs split the legislative wing of the party to join the ruling BJP, reducing the party's legislative strength to three.
The split was engineered by former Chief Minister Digambar Kamat and former minister in the BJP-led government in Goa Michael Lobo, who were elected on a Congress ticket from the Margao and Calangute assembly constituencies.
According to the disqualification petition filed by Chodankar last month, the merger of the eight legislators into the BJP was invalid. Chodankar has also said that the legislators should be disqualified as MLAs of the state assembly under Article 191 (2) of the Constitution of India read with para 2 (1) (a) of tenth schedule of Constitution of India.
Chodankar had also accused Tawadkar of not acting on his petition, which is one of the two such disqualification pleas pending before Tawadkar.
Goa Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar is already hearing a disqualification petition also filed by the Congress party against the eight MLAs.