Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram today dubbed as "blatantly partisan" the decision of the Tamil Nadu Assembly speaker to disqualify 18 AIADMK MLAs and said it was aimed at helping the minority state government, which he described as a "sinking ship".
In a series of Tweets, he also said the decision was taken to "manufacture" a majority for the "paralysed" state government and called TN a "theatre of the absurd".
"Speaker's decision to disqualify MLAs blatantly partisan and to help minority TN Govt. Nothing can save sinking ship," he tweeted.
In another Tweet, he said, "18 MLAs disqualified to manufacture a majority for paralysed TN Govt. TN is theatre of the absurd."
"If TN Speaker is correct, no elected leader of a legislature party can be changed by dissenting MLAs! Once elected, CM for 5 years!," he said.
Taking a dig at the governor and the speaker, the former Union minister said in a Tweet, "Governor requested to act. He did not! Speaker requested to observe restraint. He acted! TN politics is tragi-comedy".
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi had yesterday questioned the "huge delay" by the TN Assembly speaker and the governor in disqualifying the 18 AIADMK lawmakers under the anti-defection law, saying the decision was liable to be challenged in court.
He said every political party was monitoring the decision, but adopted a cautious approach by saying that his party was not obliged to comment on another party.
"We have no hesitation in saying that the huge delay in action by the speaker and by the governor is something which would be seriously liable to be questioned in court and I will not go beyond that," he told reporters.
The 18 rebel MLAs were disqualified yesterday by Speaker P Dhanapal amid a power tussle between Chief Minister K Palaniswami and sidelined leader TTV Dhinakaran.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)