Rajasthan Assembly Speaker to move Supreme Court over HC “direction”

The Rajasthan Assembly Speaker on Wednesday said he’ll move the Supreme Courta day after receiving a”management” from the high court to defer action on the notices sent to dissident Congress MLAs.

Speaker C P Joshi said he is filing a special leave petition (SLP) before the apex court to avert a constitutional crisis.

The division bench Tuesday deferred its arrangement till Friday on a petition filed by Sachin Pilot and 18 additional MLAs, challenging that the disqualification notices sent to them.

It had requested the Speaker and to put his next move too on hold till then and “directed so”.

“I have asked my attorney to submit an SLP in the Supreme Court concerning why we are moving to a constitutional crisis,” the Speaker stated in a press conference.

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Joshi said circumventing the defined roles of an institution is a danger to parliamentary democracy. “Therefore, before we proceed towards a constitutional crisis, I believed it’s right that a petition be filed at the Supreme Court,” he added.

“I hope that the court would take cognisance of the request despite the coronavirus catastrophe, so that it can be ensured that an authority can release its role under the constitutional system,” he explained.

Joshi said only show-cause finds were issued to the MLAs and no decision was taken. The Speaker’s counselor had twice before agreed to the court’s “petition” to prolong the deadline for receiving responses from the MLAs into this show cause notices.

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On Tuesday, the court of Chief Justice Indrajit Mahanty and Justice Prakash Gupta made an identical request once the event failed to get on at the end of the afternoon and were put off until Friday.

The problem seems to have arisen following the court listed this in writing, including that it has” directed accordingly”. Even the Speaker’s office had issued notices to the Pilot and another MLAs on July 14 on the basis of a complaint from their party they had skipped two meetings of the Congress Legislature Party, beating a whip.

The admissions gave that the MLAs three days to submit their reply on the reason why they shouldn’t be disqualified from the assembly. But the dissident leaders moved the Rajasthan High Court on July 16, challenging the notices.