BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday dismissed the petition filed by a Bengaluru-based advocate questioning the appointment of Political Secretaries and Media Advisor to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
The division bench of Chief Justice Prasanna B Varale and Justice Krishna S Dixit passed the order dismissing the petition filed by Umapathi S. He questioned the appointment of K Govindaraj and Nazeer Ahmed as Political Secretary, Sunil Kunagol as Chief Advisor and KV Prabhakar as Media Advisor to the CM, with the status of cabinet rank, on the ground that the appointment is without jurisdiction and unconstitutional.
In support of his arguments, the petitioner banked upon Article 164(1A) of the Constitution which prescribes that the total number of ministers, including the CM in a state shall not exceed 15% of the total number of MLAs This ceiling limit is breached by the appointments in question, he argued.
“If the respondents were appointed as ministers, there could have been scope for the invocation of Article 164. Merely because a Cabinet status is conferred on a particular appointee, that per se does not make him a minister within the meaning of Article 164... Such status is conferred for various reasons that fall within the exclusive domain of the Executive and therefore, the court cannot undertake their deeper examination in judicial review”, the court said.
The government advocate contended that Article 164 is not invokable since none of the appointees has been appointed as the minister and therefore, the petition is unworthy of consideration.