PANJIM: Goa Assembly Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar’s statement that he will set timeline for deciding disqualification petition against eight defectors has come as a shocker to petitioners, who recalled that in May this year, the Speaker had told the High Court of Bombay at Goa that he will hear petitions and decide them expeditiously.
As the hearings were getting delayed due to inaction of the Speaker, one of the petitioners Girish Chodankar had approached the High Court, who in May this year directed the Speaker to decide his disqualification petition against eight rebel Congress MLAs in a time-bound manner more particularly in terms of law laid down by the Supreme Court that disqualification petitions be decided within three months.
Tawadkar is hearing four disqualification petitions, three against eight former Congress MLAs and another against two members for voluntarily giving up Congress party’s membership.
Reacting to Tawadkar’s statement, former State Election Commissioner (SEC) Prof Prabhakar Timble said, “There is no other litigation before the Goa Assembly Speaker except the two disqualification petitions. The time prescribed by the Supreme Court for disposal of such petitions has lapsed long back. Any further delay actually means that the Speaker is violating the laid down time-frame with impunity. This also amounts to a vulgar display of partisanship and an attempt to scuttle the law using the pedestal of constitutional and autonomous position of the Speaker.”
According to Prof Timble, nothing prevents the Speaker from providing a continuous hearing till the matter is finally disposed. Once the permissible time-frame is exhausted, any talk to fix another time-line is probably to hoodwink the Apex Court. With such behaviour of the Speaker, it’s total injustice to the petitioners and total relief to the alleged defectors.
This is not the first time that the petitioners filed pleas in the Apex Court as in April 2021, the then Goa Assembly Speaker Rajesh Patnekar had told the Supreme Court that he will pass his final order on two disqualification petitions filed against 12 defectors i.e. 10 from Congress and two from regional MGP, who switched over to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2019.
After the then Speaker Patnekar dismissed both the disqualification petitions and the High Court of Bombay at Goa upholding the verdicts, one of the petitioners, Chodankar approached the Supreme Court, which has adjourned the matter in November this year.
The petitioner is seeking clarity of Anti-Defection Act, stating that the High Court had committed a “grave error" in upholding the Speaker’s order that that defection of 10 MLAs constituted two-third of their legislature party, who decided to merge with another party. The petitioner has claimed that there must be a merger of the original political party with another political party and that the two-third members of the legislature party should agree with and adopt such merger under Tenth Schedule of the Constitution.