Hyderabad: In a landmark judgement, the Supreme Court on Thursday (July 31) set a three-month deadline for the speaker of the Telangana assembly to decide the disqualification petitions against ten MLAs of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) who defected to the Congress after its victory in the state elections.

The 74-page judgement of Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai and Justice Augustine George Masih quashed the order of a division bench of the Telangana high court in November last year, which set aside a single-judge bench's direction to speaker G. Prasad Kumar to fix a schedule for hearing the disqualification petitions within four weeks.

The schedule fixed for the speaker's decision was to be communicated to the high court.

“If no action is taken within four weeks, the matter will be reopened suo motu and appropriate orders passed,” the judge, Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy, had noted in his order on September 9.

The legislative assembly through its secretary preferred a writ appeal in the high court against Justice Reddy's order. The division bench that heard the matter held that the speaker must decide the matter in a reasonable time frame.

Thereafter, the division bench's order was challenged in the Supreme Court by the BRS, represented by its MLAs K.T. Rama Rao, P. Kaushik Reddy and K.P. Vivekanand Goud, as well as the assembly's BJP floor leader A. Maheshwar Reddy.

In its latest judgement, the Supreme Court bench headed by the chief justice urged parliament to reconsider whether the speaker should be allowed to decide on disqualification petitions.

It also urged parliament to reconsider whether the present mechanism of entrusting the speaker or chair of a house to decide disqualification petitions was conducive to curbing political defections.

The bench directed the speaker not to permit any of the MLAs who are sought to be disqualified to protract the proceedings. In the event of MLAs attempting to prolong the proceedings, the speaker would draw an adverse inference against such of the MLAs, it said.

It also noted that the speaker in his capacity as a tribunal in deciding disqualification petitions did not enjoy “constitutional immunity”.

The bench had reserved orders in April after hearing both sides. The petitioners were represented by senior lawyers Aryama Sundaram, Dama Seshadri Naidu and Gandra Mohan Rao. The speaker was represented by senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Ravi Shankar Jandhyala, Gaurav Agrawal and Niranjan Reddy.

Initially, the disqualification of only three MLAs was sought from the speaker: T. Venkat Rao, Kadiyam Srihari and Danam Nagender, who won the November 2023 assembly elections on a BRS ticket but defected to the Congress following its victory in the polls.

Seven more MLAs were added to the list when the matter was taken to court. Interestingly, they included former speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, who presided over the House when the BRS won for the second time in 2018.

After the BRS won its second term, 13 MLAs of the Congress had defected to the former, which resulted in incumbent deputy chief minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka losing his status of leader of opposition.

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), as the BRS was then called, had won 88 seats, while the Congress won 19 in the 119-member assembly.

The Congress's legislature party was then deemed to have merged with the TRS as two-thirds of its members agreed to such a merger under the tenth schedule of the constitution, also known as the anti-defection law.

In its first term from 2014 to 2018, the TRS saw an influx of 25 MLAs from other parties, including 12 of the Telugu Desam Party, seven of the Congress, three of YSR Congress Party, two of Bahujan Samaj Party and one of the Communist Party of India. The BRS's current leader in the legislative council (the upper house of Telangana's legislature), S. Madhusudhana Chary, was the assembly speaker then.

With no action coming from the speaker on both occasions, the opposition parties moved the court, but nothing materialised.

Making its observations, the Supreme Court said it cannot allow a “situation of ‘operation successful, patient died’” by allowing the disqualification petitions to remain pending during the term of the assembly and the defectors to reap the benefits of the delay.

Noting that the speaker had not even issued notice on the disqualification petitions for over seven months, the Supreme Court observed:

“The question, therefore, that we ask ourselves is as to whether the speaker has acted in an expeditious manner, when expedition was one of the main reasons why the parliament has entrusted the important task of adjudicating disqualification petitions to the speaker/chairman. Non-issuance of any notice for a period of more than seven months and issuing notice only after either the proceedings were filed before this court or after this court has heard the matter for the first time cannot by any stretch be envisaged as acting in an expeditious manner.”

The court said that the failure to issue directions to the speaker in the facts and circumstances of this case would frustrate the very objective of the tenth schedule.

“If we do not issue any direction, it will amount to permitting the speaker to repeat the widely criticised situation of ‘operation successful, patient died’,” the court observed.

The petitioners before the high court had contended that the delay in deciding the disqualification petitions could give the ruling party a chance to enable more defections from the BRS.

The respondents, on the other hand, questioned the maintainability of the writ petition, arguing that the court lacked the jurisdiction to issue a writ of mandamus against the speaker to decide upon the disqualification pleas.

The Supreme Court had questioned the contention that a reasonable period ought to be given for deciding the disqualification pleas against the defecting MLAs. In response, Singhvi had said in April that six months would be a reasonable time. However, he also said that at that stage it would not be appropriate in the present cases to “short-circuit” the speaker's discretion.

To this, Justice Gavai asked, “Though a period of more than one year and two months has passed, the time has not come for this court to intervene?”

Reacting to the judgement, the BRS said it paved the way for by-elections to ten assembly constituencies represented by the defecting MLAs.

The party, however, nursed some concerns that the speaker might circumvent the court's orders on technical grounds, as several defecting MLAs have already filed affidavits confirming their allegiance to the BRS. They claimed their meetings with the chief minister were mere courtesy calls.

In the absence of a formal resignation from the BRS or an official enrolment in the Congress, producing concrete proof of their defection was difficult, a leader claimed.

The Congress reacted by saying the court did not question the authority of the speaker but merely gave a direction to him.

The court held that only the speaker was authorised to protect the rights of the House, said Congress MLC Addanki Dayakar.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.