Hyderabad High Court issues notices to 20 YSRCP members

YSRCP sought disqualification of these MLAs under the Anti-defection Law

Hyderabad High Court on Monday issued notices to 20 YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) MLAs on the maintainability of a petition in which their fellow members have sought their disqualification by the speaker of Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly under the provisions of Anti-defection Law.

In March, YSRCP filed a petition with speaker Kodela Siva Prasada Rao urging him to disqualify those MLAs who had joined the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) after winning the assembly elections on YSRCP tickets.

Even as the petition was pending before the speaker's office, a group of YSR Congress MLAs had recently approached the high court challenging the alleged inaction of the speaker in disposing of the party's petition regarding the disqualification of their former colleagues.

The division bench headed by acting chief justice justice Ramesh Ranganathan and justice A Shankar Narayana have directed the MLAs as well as the secretary of the AP legislative assembly to submit their responses on the question of maintainability of the petition.

Earlier on November 9, a similar case pertaining to the Telangana legislative assembly was referred to the five-judge Constitutional Bench by a division bench of the Supreme Court.

In this case, the petitioner has sought directions to speaker of the assembly to act on a disqualification petition filed against the MLAs who had joined the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) from Congress among other parties.

The Supreme Court bench comprising of justice R K Agarwal and justice R F Nariman had said that issuing a mandumus to a speaker even before he decides the pending pleas before him is a highly restricted area and therefore it was a fit case to be looked into by the constitutional bench.

The petition filed by Congress MLA S A Sampath Kumar informed the court that when the TRS came to power it had got 63 MLAs in the 119-member assembly and that number has risen to 89 after the defections.

In September, the Hyderabad high court had issued orders in a related case asking the Telangana assembly speaker to dispose of within 90 days the petitions pending before him seeking disqualification against MLAs for alleged violation of the Anti-defection Law.