The Supreme Court on Tuesday decided to hear the matter related to disqualification of 12 Goa MLAs later next year, after noting that the petition filed by Goa Congress chief Girish Chodankar had become infructuous due to passage of time.
Senior Advocate Darius Khambatta contended before the Bench of Justice M.R. Shah and Justice Hima Kohli that the matter had become academic now, since the new term of Assembly had commenced after the 2022 elections.
The Apex Court, after observing that there was no urgency in the matter any longer, decided to keep the question of law open.
Khambatta said nothing survived in the order as out of 10 MLAs, only three were re-elected.
The Counsel for the petitioner submitted that Goa has become a defection capital.
Justice Shah wondered during the hearing whether morality had gone down to such an extent that the case was listed for the first time since April this year.
In 2019, 12 Congress MLAs had joined BJP. The Bombay High Court had ruled that it was a case of merger as the MLAs who joined BJP constituted 2/3rds of Congress MLAs.
Chodankar challenged this verdict, stating that 2/3rds of the entire political party, instead of the legislature party, has to be taken into account to determine the validity of a merger.
As per the SLP, the High Court had committed a grave error in upholding the order of the Speaker on the mistaken premise that since the remaining MLAs constituted 2/2rd of their legislature party and had decided to merge with another party, they would enjoy the protection granted under Para 4 of Schedule X of the Constitution by invoking the deeming fiction contained in Para 4(2).
The Congress leader said this interpretation would render Para 4 of Schedule X of the Constitution unworkable and would stand at odds with the object of enactment of the Schedule.
(Case Title: Girish Chodankar vs The Speaker, Goa Legislative Assembly & Ors)