Supreme Court today set aside a resolution of the Tamil Nadu Assembly suspending six DMDK legislators for allegedly creating ruckus and attempting to assault the Speaker in the House last year without giving them the chance to defend themselves.
Holding that the principle of natural justice was violated as the MLAs were not provided with the video recording of their conduct, a bench of justices J Chelameswar and Abhay Manohar Sapre quashed the March 31, 2015 resolution of Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly recommending action against them.
It said the consequence of setting aside the resolution was that the salary and other benefits incidental to the membership of the assembly stand restored to the six MLAs.
"It is the legal obligation of the Privileges Committee to ensure that a copy of the video recording is supplied to the petitioners (MLAs) in order to satisfy the requirements of the principles of natural justice.
"The failure to supply a copy of the video recording or affording an opportunity to the petitioners to view the video recording relied upon by the committee in our view clearly resulted in the violation of the principles of natural justice i.E. A denial of a reasonable opportunity to meet the case," the bench said.
"We, therefore, have no option but to set aside the impugned resolution dated March 31,2015 passed in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly. The same is accordingly set aside," the bench said.
Following a ruckus inside the state assembly on February 19, 2015, 19 MLAs, including the six petitioners, were suspended from the House for the remaining period of that session through a resolution.
Out of the 19, six MLAs had approached the apex court challenging the order.
The speaker had referred the incident to the assembly's Privileges Committee to identify those members who had attempted to assault the Speaker and others.
The Privileges Committee, after an inquiry, recorded a
conclusion that the conduct of the six petitioners was in breach of the privileges of the House and recommended they be removed for 10 days from the commencement of the next session and also not to pay their salary and other benefits.
The MLAs argued in the apex court that the Privileges Committee relied upon certain video recordings for arriving at the conclusion that they were guilty of conduct which was in breach of the privileges of the house but a copy of the video recording was not provided to them.
The apex court, in its judgement, said "the principles of natural justice require that the petitioners ought to have been granted an opportunity to see the video recording.
"Perhaps they might have had an opportunity to explain why the video recording does not contain any evidence/material for recommending action against all or some of them or to explain that the video recording should have been interpreted differently."
The bench said when a legislator is prevented from participating in the proceedings of the House, there would be a curtailment of the legislator's constitutional right of free speech in the House of whichhe or she is a member.
"But such curtailment is sanctioned by Constitution in view of the fact that such a right is made subject to other provisions of the Constitution, the rules and standing orders regulating the procedure of the legislative bodies", it said.
"Therefore, we are of the opinion that though there is a curtailment of the petitioners' right of free speech in the Legislative Assembly of Tamil Nadu to which they are entitled under Article 194 by virtue of the impugned order, the said order does not, in the context, violate the fundamental rights of petitioners guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a)," it said.
