SC asks Puducherry Assembly to allow nominated BJP MLAs to participate

The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Puducherry Legislative Assembly to allow the three nominated Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs to participate in the Assembly proceedings, and sought the Centre's response to pleas challenging their nomination.

A bench of Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Ashok Bhushan asked the Centre to file its response to the pleas of Congress MLAs in Puducherry and posted the matter for August 28.

"It needs consideration. These are pure legal questions... We expect the Assembly to allow MLAs to function," said the bench while refusing to stay the Madras High Court judgement which had upheld the nominations of the three BJP members.

The Union Home Ministry had appointed BJP Puducherry unit chief V. Saminathan, its treasurer K.G. Shankar, and educationist S. Selva Ganapathy to the Assembly in June 2017.

However, Assembly Speaker V. Vaithilingam had refused to recognize their appointment, saying they were not nominated by competent authority. He had denied them permission to enter the Assembly, in spite of the Madras High Court order upholding their nomination.

But they were inducted as nominated MLAs by Lt. Governor Kiran Bedi on July 4, 2017.

Congress MLAs K. Lakshminarayanan and S. Dhanalakshmi have approached the apex court against the Madras High Court order of upholding the nomination of BJP MLAs.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the Congress MLAs in the apex court, contended that the nominations were made by the Centre to the Puducherry Legislative Assembly without taking Chief Minister V. Narayanaswamy into confidence and obtaining his recommendations.

--IANS

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