HYDERABAD: In what could be seen as another victory for the Congress Party leaders - Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and SA Sampath Kumar, division bench of the Hyderabad High Court has quashed an appeal petition filed by TRS MLAs challenging the single judge order delivered earlier annulling the expulsion of Komatireddy and Sampath from the Telangana State Legislative Assembly.
The division bench on Monday held that the petition challenging the single judge's order annulling the expulsion of two Congress MLAs was not maintainable.
It may be recalled that Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and Sampath Kumar were expelled for their alleged inappropriate behavior during Governor ESL Narasimhan’s joint address to both houses of Assembly on March 12 this year, during the beginning of the budget session of the State Legislature. Their membership was restored by an order passed by Justice B Siva Sankara Rao of Hyderabad High Court in April. The judge then commented that principles of natural justice was not followed, while expelling the two members from the House.
Single judge order was later challenged by 12 ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) MLAs, before a division bench headed by Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan.
Appearing for the petitioners, senior counsel CS Vaidyanathan had argued that the TRS MLAs constituted "necessary parties" to the appeal as they had been part of the resolution that expelled the Congress members from the House. Then, the division bench made it clear that the TRS MLAs did not constitute "necessary parties", and that the appeal should have been filed either by the Speaker of the House or the Advocate General of the State government.
Meanwhile, welcoming the division bench verdict, Komatireddy Venkat Reddy demanded that Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and Telangana Assembly authorities take immediate steps to restore their membership.
The Congress senior leader, then, expressed severe unhappiness at his party State leadership, particularly Congress Legislative Party (CLP) leader K Jana Reddy and TPCC chief N Uttam Kumar Reddy, for their alleged failure to exert pressure on the State government to implement single judge order, delivered earlier. He asked all the Congress MLAs including Jana Reddy and Uttam to get ready for quitting their posts, if the State Assembly authorities fail to honour the latest verdict of the Court, by tomorrow.