The Supreme Court will on November 17 hear a petition seeking contempt proceedings against the Telangana Speaker for allegedly not following its directions to decide on disqualification pleas against 10 BRS MLAs who defected to the ruling Congress.
On July 31, the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice BR Gavai directed the Assembly Speaker to decide within three months the disqualification of 10 Bharat Rashtra Samithi MLAs.
On Monday, the lawyer referred to the contempt motion for an urgent hearing, saying that the speaker did not act within the three-month period.
“I will list it next Monday,” said CJI Gavai.
Expressing concern over the delay, the counsel said the respondents were “dragging the proceedings till the end of the month for obvious reasons”, an apparent reference to the retirement of CJI Gavaie on November 23.
“The Supreme Court will not close after November 24,” the CJI said.
Counsel representing the petitioner also submitted that no proceedings have been conducted since the court’s July 31 order.
“The MLAs are still proceeding. Your Lordship was of the view that if any MLA tried to drag on the proceedings, an adverse inference would be drawn. Two petitions are pending. The speaker did not touch them. The others are at the evidence stage,” the lawyer said.
The contempt plea stems from the apex court’s July 31 judgment delivered by a bench of CJI and Justice AG Masih in a series of writ petitions filed by BRS leaders KT Rama Rao, Padi Kaushik Reddy and KO Vivekanand.
The Supreme Court reiterated that the speaker acts as a tribunal in deciding applications for disqualification under the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment and therefore does not enjoy “constitutional immunity”.
The Tenth Schedule deals with provisions for disqualification on the ground of defection.
“The very foundations of our democracy are shaken when elected representatives are allowed to step down and yet continue in office without a timely decision. Parliament trusted the high office of the Speaker to act swiftly. This trust has not been honored in many cases,” the bench said.
