CHENNAI: A court cannot direct the Assembly Speaker to act on complaints, but it can only interfere on decisions taken by the Speaker, senior advocate CS Vaidyanathan told the first bench of the Madras High Court on Wednesday.A decision on disqualifying a legislator can be taken by the Speaker, but the courts cannot have jurisdiction over the issue, counsel submitted before the court.
Vaidyanathan, appearing for Speaker P Dhanapal, made the submission in the PIL filed by DMK whip R Sakkarapani, seeking to disqualify Deputy CM O Panneerselvam and 10 MLAs who voted against the motion of confidence moved by Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, on February 18 last year.
“A court can interfere on the decisions already taken by the Speaker, but it cannot direct the Speaker to act upon complaints,” counsel stressed.
Moreover, he pointed out that a plea is already pending with a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court to decide on the powers of the High Courts over the decisions of Speakers of the respective Assemblies and sought time to file a counter affidavit.Recording the submissions, the bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice Abdul Quddhose posted the plea for February 13 for further hearing.
The issue pertains to a batch of pleas heard by the first bench involving powers of the Speaker of the Assembly and the jurisdiction of the court to interfere, including, the present plea moved by DMK whip, pleas assailing the disqualification of 18 rebel AIADMK MLAs, plea questioning the capacity of Panneerselvam and K Pandiarajan occupying the posts of Deputy Chief Minister and minister respectively, when they are deemed to have been disqualified as legislators as and when they voted against the motion of confidence moved by the Chief Minister.
When the plea came up for hearing, senior counsel Kapil Sibal, representing Sakkarapani submitted that the Speaker had failed to take action against Panneerselvam and 10 other MLAs for voting against CM’s motion of confidence on February 18, 2017.“The Speaker has so far not justified his inaction against the MLAs either to us or to the court. But he swiftly acted against the 18 MLAs who made a representation to the Governor withdrawing their support to the Chief Minister. The MLAs met the Governor on August 22, and the Speaker initiated action against them on August 24,” counsel said.