HC rules CM be made party in MLAs' disqualification case

The Karnataka High Court on Monday rejected the plea of chief minister B S Yeddyurappa not to make him a party to the petition by five independent MLAs challenging their disqualification from the legislative assembly.

A three-judge bench of Justice Mohan Shantanagoudar, Justice S Abdul Nazeer and Justice A S Bopanna ruled that the chief minister be made a party to the case and adjourned hearing to November 28.

Yeddyurappa had contended that he had no role in the disqualification of the legislators and hence the issue was between them and assembly speaker K G Bopaiah. “The chief minister is not a party before the speaker,” Yeddyurappa’s counsel argued and told the court that the decision to disqualify was taken based on the complaint of the voters.

The speaker had disqualified five independent legislators on October 10 on the basis of the complaint by five voters, who said these legislators betrayed their voters by rebelling against Yeddyurappa.

The five Independent legislators are Shivaraj S Thangadagi, D Sudhakar, Gulihatti D Shekhar, Ventakaramanappa and P M Narendraswamy. They along with 11 BJP MLAs told Governor H R Bhardwaj on October 6 that they no longer had confidence in Yeddyurappa.

Bopaiah disqualified all the 16 MLAs on October 10, a day ahead of the trust vote sought by Yeddyurappa. The chief minister won a second trust vote on October 14 as the first one on October 11 was termed by Bhardwaj to be not in order.

The disqualification of the 11 BJP legislators was upheld by the high court on October 29.

The court also ordered the counsel for petitioners to file the consolidated petition by tomorrow and other side to file objections by November 22 and posted hearing to November 29.

The independents, in their application, had prayed to amend the petition to replace the sentence “the petitioners had never left the BJP” with “the petitioners had not joined the BJP at all”, contending that the original sentence was an “inadvertent mistake”.