NT Reporter
Panaji
The Supreme Court has disposed of the Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by Congress leader Girish Chodankar seeking disqualification of 10 MLAs who defected from Congress in July 2019.
The court termed the petition as “infructuous”.
“In view of the fact that, during pendency of this petition, fresh elections in the State Legislative Assembly have taken place, the issue raised in the instant petition have become largely academic,” it observed.
Chodankar had urged the court to interpret the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution in consonance with the spirit and objective of its enactment.
However, the court recorded that Chodankar has filed another SLP raising similar questions regarding the defection of eight Congress MLAs in September 2022.
The second petition seeks disqualification of the G8 — Digambar Kamat, Michael Lobo, Delilah Lobo, Aleixo Sequeira, Sankalp Amonkar, Rodolfo Fernandes, Kedar Naik and Rajesh Faldessai.
Granting liberty to the parties to file counter-affidavits and rejoinders, the Supreme Court has posted the matter for hearing on April 7.
The BJP, which won 13 seats in the 2017 state elections, formed the government with the support of MGP, Goa Forward Party and independent MLAs. In 2019, 10 of the 15 Congress MLAs and two of three MGP MLAs defected to BJP.
The G10 MLAs switched allegiance in July 2019 when Chandrakant ‘Babu’ Kavalekar, then Leader of Opposition, along with Atanasio ‘Babush’ Monserrate, Jennifer Monserrate, Francis Silveira, Filipe Neri Rodrigues, Antonio Fernandes, Nilkanth Halarnkar, Clafasio Dias, Wilfred D’Sa and Isidore Fernandes, quit Congress.
A verdict of the High Court of Bombay at Goa had dismissed petitions filed by Congress and Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party challenging the Assembly Speaker’s decision to reject pleas to disqualify the 10 Congress legislators and two MGP MLAs for defecting to BJP without resigning as MLAs.
The High Court upheld the Speaker’s order, ruling that the shift did not attract disqualification under the anti-defection law as more than two-thirds of the MLAs of the two parties had switched.
The High Court said they were protected under Section 4(2) of the Tenth Schedule, which states
that “the merger of the original political party of a member of a House shall be deemed to have taken place if, and only if, not less than two-thirds of the members of the legislature party concerned have agreed to such a merger.”
