9 Karnataka MLAs move SC against disqualification order

Nine Karnataka MLAs on Thursday moved the Supreme Court seeking directions to quash the former Assembly Speaker's decision to disqualify them from the House.

Earlier, the MLAs had moved the court seeking directions to the Speaker to accept their resignation from the Assembly. However, the top court has given free hand to the Speaker to decide on the MLAs' resignation as per the Constitution but said that the MLAs cannot be compelled to participate in the proceedings of the House.

Nine legislators including A.H. Vishwanath, K.C. Narayanagowda, A.K. Gopaliah, Pratap Gouda and others said that they have the right to resign from the post and requested the top court to set aside Karnataka Assembly Speaker's order of July 28.

On July 28, then state Assembly Speaker K.R. Ramesh Kumar disqualified the 14 rebel MLAs, rejecting the resignations tendered by them.

The 14 MLAs had remained absent from the House on July 23 when then Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy put the confidence motion to vote.

Eleven lawmakers from the Congress lawmakers were disqualified namely Pratap Gouda Patil (Maski), B.C. Patil (Hirekerur), Shivaram Hebbar (Yellapur), S.T. Someshekhar (Yeshwantapur), Byrati Basavraj (K.R. Puram), Anand Singh (Vijayanagar), R. Roshan Baig (Shivajinagar), Muniratna (R.R. Nagar), K. Sudhakar (Chikkaballapur), M.T.B. Nagaraj (Hoskote) and Shrimant Patil (Kagawad).

Three Janata Dal-Secular legislators who were disqualified are A.H. Vishwanath (Hunsur), Narayan Gowda (K.R. Pete) and K. Gopalaiah (Mahalakshmi Layout).

The MLAs said that the actions of the then Speaker was in gross violations of the orders passed by the top court, completely illegal and unconstitutional.

"The action of the Speaker is thus in violation of the fundamental rights of the petitioners guaranteed under Articles 19 and 21. The actions of the (former) Speaker in disqualifying the petitioners under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution and rejecting the resignations submitted by the petitioners, is grossly illegal, irrational, mala fide and violative of constitutional mandate under Article 14, is amenable to judicial review under article 32 of the constitution," the petitioners said in the plea.

They said that the Speaker has violated the mandate under Article 190 of the Constitution by rejecting the resignations.

"It is stated that there is no doubt that the resignations are voluntary and genuine. It is submitted that not only had the petitioners had themselves submitted their resignations on July 6, petitioners had also appeared in person before the Speaker and submitted their resignation afresh on July 11, in accordance with the directions of this court dated July 11," the petitioners said.

The petitioners have maintained that they have resigned voluntarily and their resignation must be accepted.

"It is submitted that the conduct and motive for submitting the resignation is wholly immaterial to decide the voluntariness and genuineness of the resignation of the petitioners. The impugned order is also contradictory in itself as on one hand, it holds that the petitioners appeared before him and submitted their resignations in person and in the prescribed format and on the other hand goes on to hold that the resignations are not voluntary and genuine," the plea said.

The political scenerio in Karnataka have recently undergone changes in power as Kumaraswamy lost the trust vote and BJP leader B.S. Yeddiyurappa formed the government.

( With inputs from IANS )