Supreme Court to hear DMK’s plea on October 30

New Delhi:The Supreme Court on Tuesday posted for final hearing on October 30 petitions filed by DMK and on behalf of TTV Dinakaran camp challenging the Madras high court order refusing to direct the Speaker to act on the complaint to disqualify O. Panneerselvam and 10 others for voting against the confidence motion moved by chief minister Edapadi Palaniswami in February 2017. A bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan decided to post the matter for final hearing on October 30, after senior counsel Kapil Sibal, Amarendra Saran, C.S. Vaidyanathan, Guru Krishnakumar and others pleaded for time to file replies and rejoinders to the appeals.

In its appeal against the April 27 order, R. Sakka-rapani of the DMK said the present appeal raises important question of law, 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 metioned therein are met?

Vetrivel of Dinakaran camp and Thanga Tamil Selvan also filed similar appeals. The SLPs 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.

They alleged that the Speaker had acted malafidely while passing an order on September 18, 2017 while at the same he had not even issued notice on the disqualification petition filed against 11 other MLAs of O. Panneerselvam camp in March 2017, when they voted against the motion of confidence taken out by Chief Minister E. Palaniswami

The Speaker despite having found the 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.