Supreme Court ruling on Karnataka MLAs may redefine powers of speakers

The Supreme Court on Friday
reserved its verdict on petitions filed by 15 disqualified Congress and JD(S)
MLAs and the final outcome may break new ground on the Speaker’s powers,
including on rejection of resignation by members of the assembly.

During the last leg of final
arguments on the rebel’s petitions, a bench of Justices N V Ramana, Sanjiv
Khanna and Krishna Murari appeared to disapprove of senior advocate Kapil
Sibal’s contention, on behalf of Congress, that the Speaker was well within his
rights to inquire into the motive behind the resignations of MLAs and reject
them if he had reasons to believe that the MLAs were planning to join another
party and seek re-entry into the assembly by contesting bypolls.

“If an MLA is honest about his
resignation, he would go to the Speaker and inform him that he was resigning to
join another party. The MLA owes it to his constituency and the party on whose
ticket he had got elected to the assembly,” Sibal said.

Senior advocate Devadatt Kamat
said none of the MLAs contested the speaker’s remarks about their anti-party
activities and defiance of party whips which led to their disqualification. But
the SC focussed on the resignations of the MLAs.

The Speaker, who had received the
resignations prior to petitions seeking their disqualification, had rejected
their resignations and disqualified them from contesting again till the end of
the assembly’s term in 2024.

The Justice Ramana-led bench asked
three questions to counter Sibal’s argument, “Suppose a particular MLA faced
certain controversy and decided to get a fresh command from the electorate of
his constituency, can the Speaker reject his resignation saying he was seeking
to come back to the House?

Second, suppose electorate of a
particular constituency has a certain stand and the party to which the MLA
belongs acts contrary to that stand, can’t the MLA resign and seek re-election?

Third, suppose a ruling party
passes a legislation to which the MLA and his constituency is dead against, can
the speaker reject his resignation?”

Sibal agreed that these questions
could arise and argued that the very complexity of the questions was the reason
why he was requesting the bench to refer the issues arising from these
petitions, including the speaker’s powers, to a five-judge constitution bench.

“These questions about Speaker’s
powers have never been examined by the SC in the past and it would be better if
the law is interpreted by a constitution bench,” he said.