Order reserved for Monday on BSP MLAs’ merger with Congress

JAIPUR: Rajasthan High Court on Friday reserved its order on the petition challenging the merger of six BSP MLAs into the Congress and the order of the Speaker approving the merger on September 18 last year.
The single bench of Justice Mahendra Goyal will pronounce his judgment on Monday on a petition by BJP MLA Madan Dilawar and BSP.
The court directed that the Speaker will not give any order on the disqualification petition of the six MLAs filed by one Vijay Singh till the court pronounces its order on Monday.
The arguments of the counsels for the six MLAs were completed on Friday. Senior lawyers Siddarth Luthra, Devdutt Kamat and G S Bapna appeared for the former BSP MLAs. They pointed out that if the interpretation of the petitioner is accepted, it would lead to constitutional mayhem and the Speaker would be deprived of his powers under paragraph 6(1) of the Tenth Schedule.
“The petitioner claims that the alleged order of merger has attained finality and is therefore subject to judicial review and must be set aside. This would mean that the Speaker’s exclusive adjudicatory authority under paragraph 6 (1) will now be exercised by the court, which is specifically prohibited in Kihoto Hollohan,” argued the counsel for the BSP MLAs Siddarth Luthra .
“Such an interpretation would be contrary to the basic constitutional contours of the Tenth Schedule in terms of which no court is entitled to adjudicate on matters except after the Speaker exercises powers under paragraph 6 (1) as a tribunal, which decision can then be challenged only on four limited grounds: Perversity, mala fides, violation of the constitutional mandate and non-compliance with the rules of natural justice. This too, only after the Speaker has rendered a decision,” Devdutt Kamat.
They pointed out that this writ petition could not be entertained without a valid and legally maintainable disqualification petition being filed before the Speaker. The submissions made were that since no disqualification petition was filed, the court was entitled to adjudicate the matters in question. If such an interpretation is accepted, it would mean that petitioners in such matters would deliberately not file disqualification petitions and have the court decide these issues instead. This too is contrary to the scheme of the Tenth Schedule.
Power cut
The impact of heavy rains in Jaipur and power disruption was also seen in the high court during the hearing of the BSP merger case on Friday. Power outage was witnessed thrice in the court . Once before lunch when lawyer Devdutt Kamat was presenting his side and second time after lunch the power was cut as the hearing started. The third time during argument by Satish Mishra on behalf of BSP.