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Informist, Thursday, Jul. 31, 2025

 

NEW DELHI – The Supreme Court on Thursday asked Parliament to consider whether the mechanism of entrusting the speaker or chairman of the House, the important task of deciding the issue of disqualification on the ground of defection, was serving the purpose of effectively combating political defections or not. "If the very foundation of our democracy and the principles that sustain it are to be safeguarded, it will have to be examined whether the present mechanism is sufficient or not," said the bench led by Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai.

 

The top court directed the speaker of Telangana Legislative Assembly to decide within three months, the pleas seeking disqualifications under anti-defection law against 10 Bharat Rashtra Samithi leaders, who had defected to Indian National Congress in 2024. The top court said that failure to issue any direction to the speaker would frustrate the very purpose for which the Tenth Schedule has been brought in the Constitution. "If we do not issue any direction, it will amount to permitting the Speaker to repeat the widely criticized situation of operation successful, patient died," said the court.

 

"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 Parliament had entrusted the important task of adjudicating disqualification petitions to the speaker/chairman," said the top court. Non-issuance of any notice for more than seven months and issuing notice only after either the proceedings were filed before this court, or after court had heard the matter for the first time cannot by any stretch be envisaged as acting in an expeditious manner, the court added.

 

The case has its genesis from the governor of Telangana issuing a notification for elections to the Telangana Legislative Assembly in 2023. Some of the leaders including Danam Nagender, Venkata Rao Tellam, and Kadiyam Srihari had filed their nominations as a candidate of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi and had won their seats. However, the Indian National Congress emerged as the largest party in Telangana Legislative Assembly and formed its government. Thereafter, the 10 leaders joined the Indian National Congress at different months in 2024.

 

Consequently, the petitioners Padi Kaushik Reddy and other Bharat Rashtra Samithi filed pleas before the Telangana State Legislative Assembly seeking disqualification of the 10 leaders under the Tenth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. The top court noted that the speaker of the legislative assembly did not even find it necessary to issue notices in the petitions filed by the present petitioners for a period of more than seven months and only after the proceedings were filed before the apex court, did the speaker find it necessary to issue notice.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

 

 

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