NT NETWORK

Panaji

As the Speaker of Goa Legislative Assembly Rajesh Patnekar has fixed a final hearing in the disqualification matter against 12 MLAs, who defected to BJP in 2019, on April 20, 2021, all eyes are on the judgment to be passed by the Speaker.

The Speaker has summoned the petitioner Girish Chodankar, who has filed disqualification petition against its 10 former legislators and another petitioner MGP MLA Ramakrishna ‘Sudin’ Dhavalikar, who has sought disqualification of its two former MLAs, asking them to remain present for final hearing on April 20.

Nudged by the Supreme Court on April 6 for delaying the judgment in the disqualification matters, the Speaker Patnekar submitted that he would pass the final orders in both the matters on April 20. Accordingly he has
fixed a final hearing in the disqualification pleas on Tuesday.

Goa Pradesh Congress Committee president Girish Chodankar has filed a petition before the Speaker of Goa Legislative Assembly seeking disqualification of 10 former Congress legislators – Chandrakant ‘Babu’ Kavlekar, who is a deputy Chief Minister, Filipe Neri Rodrigues, who is the Minister for water resources, Jennifer Monserrate, who is the Minister for Revenue, besides Nilkanth Halankar, Atanasio ‘Babush’ Monserrate, Antonio ‘Tony’ Fernandes, Francisco Silveira, Isidore Fernandes, who is the Deputy Speaker, Wilfred D’Sa and Clafacio Dias, who had joined the BJP in July 2019.

While MGP leader Dhavalikar has filed disqualification petition against then two MGP legislators – Manohar ‘Babu’ Ajgaonkar, who is a deputy Chief Minister and Deepak Pauskar, who is the Minister for Public Works, had defected to the BJP in March 2019 claiming that they had merged the party with two-thirds majority.

The hearing on the petition filed by Chodankar in the Supreme Court against the Speaker of Goa Legislative Assembly will be held on April 22, 2021 before the bench headed by the Chief Justice of India Sharad Bobde.