Post-SC ruling, Goa Speaker must act on pending pleas: GFP

The Goa Forward Party (GFP) on Wednesday urged Assembly Speaker Rajesh Patnekar to immediately decide on petitions seeking disqualification of MLAs pending before him in light of a Supreme Court ruling related to Manipur.

In a path-breaking ruling on Tuesday, the SC said Parliament should "rethink" whether the Speaker of a House should continue to have powers to disqualify lawmakers as such a functionary "belongs to a particular political party".

Parliament may seriously consider amending the Constitution to substitute Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Assemblies as arbiter of disqualification issues with "a permanent Tribunal headed by a retired Supreme Court Judge or a retired Chief Justice of a High Court" or some other mechanism to ensure swift and impartial decisions, it said.

GFP president Vijai Sardesai, in a statement here, said the Speaker should stop acting like a "henchman of the BJP".

Two disqualification petitions, filed in May and August 2019, are pending before the Goa Speaker.

One of them has been filed by MGP leader Sudin Dhavalikar, seeking disqualification of two party MLAs who switched sides and joined the ruling BJP.

The other petition has been filed by Goa Congress president Girish Chodankar, seeking disqualification of ten party MLAs who joined the saffron outfit in July last year.

We welcome the Supreme Courts suggestion that an independent mechanism should be put in place to decide on disqualification of lawmakers rather than the Speaker, Sardesai said.

On Tuesday, a bench headed by Justice R F Nariman took note of the role played by Speakers and inordinate delays in deciding pleas for disqualification of lawmakers.

The bench asked the Manipur Assembly Speaker to decide within four weeks the plea of a Congress leader seeking disqualification of BJP lawmaker and Manipur Forest Minister Th Shyamkumar.

In light of the Supreme Court judgment, the Speaker of the Goa Assembly should take up the disqualification petitions pending with him and decide on them immediately, the former state minister said.

"The petitions filed in May and August 2019 are still pending. The Speaker should stop acting like a BJP henchman and decide on the petitions in a non-partisan manner, said Sardesai, whose party is a former BJP ally.