HYDERABAD: A division bench of the Hyderabad High Court on Wednesday reserved its verdict on maintainability of appeal filed by the 12 TRS MLAs challenging the order of a single judge who ruled that the expulsion of two Congress legislators — Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and SA Sampath Kumar — by the Telangana legislative assembly was invalid on the ground that the principles of natural justice was not followed. On April 17, the judge had also quashed the gazette notification issued by the state government notifying vacancy for Nalgonda and Alampur (SC) assembly constituencies represented by the expelled MLAs Komatireddy and Sampath, respectively.
When the appeal filed by TRS MLAs Vemula Prashanth Reddy and 11 others came up for hearing before the bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice K Vijaya Lakshmi, senior counsel from Supreme Court CS Vaidyanathan, appearing for the appellant TRS MLAs, challenged the arguments of the counsel for expelled two MLAs that the Assembly secretary, on behalf of the Speaker, has to file an appeal if he has any objection to the single judge order.
As per the rules pertaining to appeal, anybody can file an appeal. In fact, the appellants were the members of the House which passed the resolution expelling the two MLAs for their unruly behaviour. It was a collective decision of the House. Privilege was conferred on each and every member of the House and its their responsibility to maintain the dignity and decorum of the House, the senior counsel submitted.
Referring to the incident of throwing of earphone during the Governor’s address to the joint session of the House, Vaidyanathan contended that the issue of throwing ear phone itself amounts to showing disrespect to the House. Citing the SC judgment in Maharaja Singh case, the senior counsel said that the TRS MLAs were eligible to file the present appeal. Disputing with the submissions of the senior counsel, Jandhyala Ravi Shankar, appearing for Komatireddy, pointed out that the state government was also one of the respondents in the case.