SC to consider listing of disqualified MLAs' plea

The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider a plea for urgent listing made by Karnataka's disqualified MLAs on their petition against the then Speaker's order rejecting their resignations and declaring them as ineligible to be legislators for the term of the 15th Karnataka Legislative Assembly.

A bench of Justices N V Ramana, Mohan M Shantanagoudar and Ajay Rastogi said that the Registrar will consider the plea.

The court gave its oral direction on a mentioning made by senior advocate V Giri and Subhranshu Padhi on behalf of the disqualified legislators.

The court had on Monday declined to give any specific date of hearing.

On August 12, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi had also mentioned the matter. The court had then said the plea for urgent listing would be examined by the Registrar.

All 17 disqualified MLAs had filed the writ petitions.

In the one-joint petition, Pratap Gouda Patil, B C Patil, A S Hebbar, S T Somashekar, B A Basavaraja, and Muniratna contended the Speaker's orders passed on July 28 was “wholly illegal, arbitrary and malafide” as he arbitrarly rejected their resignations holding those as not voluntary and genuine.

They contended they had resigned on July 6 but Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar went on to disqualify them on the basis of a “wholly misconceived” petition filed by the Congress party on July 10.

Three JD(S) members A H Vishwanath, K Gopalaiah and K C Narayanagowda also filed their separate writ petition questioning the validity of the Speaker's order to disqualify them.

Similarly other disqualified MLAs – Roshan Baig, Anand Singh, M T B Nagaraj, Dr K Sudhakar, Shrimanth B Patil and R Shankar – also urged the court to quash the orders passed by the Speaker.

Two rebel Congress leaders Ramesh L Jharkhiholi and Mahesh Kumathalli had earlier filed their petition against the orders.