HC orders issue of notices to assembly speaker

The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday ordered the issuance of notices to Assembly speaker K G Bopaiah and other respondents on petitions filed by the five independent MLAs challenging their disqualification from the Assembly and posted the matter for hearing to November 8.

A three-judge bench comprising of justices Mohan Shantanagoudar, S Abdul Nazeer and A S Bopanna, to which the case was referred by a division bench headed by chief justice J S Khehar and justice N Kumar last month ordered for the issue of notices to Bopaiah seeking his response to the petition of the independents.

On November 8, 2010, the high court will hear three applications filed in the first writ petition and two applications filed in the second petition, by the independent MLAs. In the first petition, filed on the petition of the BJP MLAs, the speaker of the house was not served a notice. The high court has now permitted the serving of notices on the speaker and the private respondents.

The independents had withdrawn their support to the BJP government following which Bopaiah disqualified them on October 11 along with 11 ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators for withdrawing support to Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa’s government.

In the main petition, the independents challenged the Speaker’s order. They also later moved an amended petition contending that in the original one there were some mistakes wherein it was inadvertently stated that the independents had never left the BJP so there was no question of their disqualification.

In the amended petition, this sentence was changed to “the petitioners have not joined the BJP at all.” The independents filed another petition last week contending that the Speaker had erred in disqualifying them on the basis of representations made by five voters (the respondents) in their respective constituencies.

Counsel for the independents, P P Rao, submitted that the voters had no “locus standi” in seeking disqualification of MLAs.

Meanwhile, the court has ordered the issue of notice to Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa on an application filed by the independents on Tuesday seeking to implead him as a party in the petition which challenged the Speaker’s October 10 order based on representation of the voters.

The high court has already upheld the disqualification of the 11 BJP MLAs.

Chief justice J S Khehar constituted the full bench to hear the Independents’ case after a division bench headed by him and comprising justice N Kumar delivered a split verdict on October 18 on appeal of the 11 BJP MLAs.

Justice Khehar and justice Kumar heard the independents’ disqualification case till October 12. Since the two differed over disqualification of the BJP legislators, they decided to refer the independents’ appeal to a three-judge bench of the court.

The five disqualified Independents are Shivaraj S Tangadagi, Venkataramanappa, P M Narendra Swamy, D Sudhakar and Gulihatti Shekar.

Shekar was dropped from the ministry on September 22 while the remaining four were sacked on October 6 after they submitted a joint letter to Governor H R Bhardwaj withdrawing support to the BJP government and expressing their lack of confidence in Yeddyurappa.

Yeddyurappa won the confidence motion first on October 11 by voice vote amidst bedlam, and then for the second time on October 14 by the division of votes with 106 in favour and 100 against in a reduced house of 209 members.