HYDERABAD: The three BJP MLAs, Raghunandan Rao, Eatala Rajender and T Raja Singh -- who were suspended from the Telangana Legislative Assembly, on Tuesday filed a writ petition in the High Court challenging their suspension and seeking a direction to permit them to attend the session till its completion.
The petitioners contended that they decided to register their protest against the blatant violation of the Constitutional mandate of having the Governor’s address. In their petition, the MLAs wrote that on March 7, they had entered the Assembly Hall wearing black shawls as a mark of protest. They said they asked the Speaker for audience before the commencement of business to raise the issue of the absence of the Governor’s address.
However, the Speaker paid no heed to the requests and asked the Finance Minister to present the Budget, the petition said. After some time, MLA Raja Singh started walking towards the Speaker’s direction to catch his attention and kept imploring for an opportunity to speak, the petition said.
The petition said that this was a normal course of events in any session of the Legislature and has happened on innumerable occasions in the past. “In fact, in the instant case, members of the other opposition party, i.e. the Congress also asked the Speaker to hear them on the same issue,” it said.
After about 15 minutes of the commencement of the budget speech, the Finance Minister abruptly stopped speaking and Minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav stood up and addressed the chair, reading out an already prepared sheet of paper that he proposed to move a motion to suspend them from the House till the end of the session.
The petitioners urged the court to issue a Writ of Mandamus or direction declaring the action of the Legislature Secretary in suspending them as illegal and in violation of the Rules of Procedure and conduct of business in the Assembly, as well as Articles 14, 21, and 194 of the Constitution.