Key hearing in SC on 6 Rajasthan BSP legislators today

NEW DELHI: Ahead of the Rajasthan assembly session from August 14, the Supreme Court in a crucial hearing on Tuesday will take up a BJP MLA's petition challenging the Speaker's decision to recognise the merger of BSP legislature party, comprising all six MLAs, with Congress in September 2019.
The SC's decision on the legality of the Speaker's decision to recognise the merger would be key to Congress retaining support of the six MLAs.
In the 200-member House, Congress had 101 MLAs. Later, six BSP MLAs merged with it to take the party’s tally to 107. The Ashok Gehlot government also claimed support of 13 independents and other smaller parties to command a comfortable majority. But if the 19 rebel Congress MLAs are taken out of the equation, the BSP members will be key for the Gehlot government.
A bench of Justices Arun Mishra, B R Gavai and M R Shah on Monday said it would hear BJP MLA Madan Dilawar's petition along with the plea filed by the six MLAs seeking transfer of Dilawar's petition in the HC challenging the Speaker's rejection of his plea for their disqualification.
When 19 Congress MLAs led by Sachin Pilot rebelled against chief minister Ashok Gehlot and put the Congress in a spot, the BSP had issued a whip to its six MLAs asking them not to support Congress on the floor of the House. It had said since BSP as a party had not merged with the Congress, the merger of BSP legislature party with the Congress would not shield them from disqualification if they defied the whip.
Sensing opportunity to weaken the Congress in the assembly, Dilawar had moved a petition before the Speaker seeking disqualification of the six erstwhile BSP MLAs on the ground that there was no merger of the parties and defiance of the BSP whip would render them disqualified under the anti-defection provisions of the Tenth Schedule.
The six MLAs, through advocate Amit Pai, said the moot question involved in the petition pending before the HC was whether merger of political parties was needed to avoid disqualification under Paragraph 4 of the Tenth Schedule and whether merger of legislature parties was enough.
They said in a case relating to Nagaland assembly, the Gauhati High Court in 2014 had ruled that merger of legislature parties was enough to ward off disqualification under the anti-defection law. This decision was challenged in the SC and is pending consideration. They said the issue pending in Rajasthan HC was similar to the one pending in the SC and hence it would be better to get the petition transferred to the apex court.