2 hours ago
1
The Speaker of the Goa Legislative Assembly, Ramesh Tawadkar, Friday dismissed a disqualification petition against 8 “rebel” MLAs, who had switched from the Congress to the BJP successful 2022.
Girish Chodankar, erstwhile President of Goa Pradesh Congress Committee, had filed a petition seeking disqualification of Michael Lobo, Digambar Kamat, Aleixo Sequeira, Sankalp Amonkar, Delilah Lobo, Kedar Naik, Rajesh Faldessai and Rodolfo Fernandes nether the Tenth docket of the Constitution. In the plea, Chodankar had submitted that the 8 legislators had incurred disqualification arsenic they had voluntarily fixed up the rank of their archetypal governmental party, connected whose candidature they had contested the Assembly elections.
On September 14, 2022, the 8 MLAs, claiming to signifier two-third of the Congress legislature party, had declared a “merger” with the BJP and sought extortion nether the Tenth Schedule.
The advocator representing the 8 MLAs submitted that the Tenth Schedule does not contemplate the acceptance of the merger by the different governmental party. The advocator said that the merger was accepted by the BJP “as the respondents are sitting successful the Assembly arsenic BJP members”.
Dismissing the plea, Speaker Tawadkar observed that the facts and the factual issues successful the petition are identical to different disqualification petition precocious heard by him. On October 14, Tawadkar dismissed a disqualification petition filed by 1 Dominic Noronha against the 8 MLAs.
In the judgement dated October 14 that was referred to successful Friday’s order, the Speaker, citing a Supreme Court ruling, said, “The Tenth Schedule confers legitimacy to the actions of the legislators which would different pb to disqualification if a fig of legislators disagree with the governmental party. The autarkic beingness of the Legislature Party is accepted arsenic a defence to the enactment of legislators, which would person different amounted to defection. This reflection of the Hon’ble Supreme Court intelligibly holds that if two-thirds of the members of the Legislature Party disagree with the governmental party, specified disagreement is protected and the aforesaid shall not incur a disqualification.”
In the bid connected Friday, the Speaker said, “Even the ineligible issues progressive successful some these cases are identical. I cannot person a antithetic bid than what I had passed successful Noronha’s case.”
The Speaker said, “In elemental words… Disqualification connected the grounds of defection does not use successful lawsuit of merger.”
Chodankar told The Indian Express that the bid amounted to “encouraging defections”. “I americium assured that the Supreme Court volition yet determine connected this substance and disqualify the 8 defecting MLAs successful Goa,” helium said.
.png "indianexpress.")
.png "khaleejtimes")
.png "arabnews")
.png "gulfnews"){kind=logo}
English (US) · 
Hindi (IN) ·