New Delhi: The Supreme Court will on November 17 hear a petition seeking contempt proceedings against the Telangana speaker for allegedly not complying with its direction to decide disqualification pleas against 10 BRS MLAs who defected to the ruling Congress.
On July 31, a top court bench headed by Chief Justice B R Gavai directed the assembly speaker to decide in three months the matter of the disqualification of the 10 Bharat Rashtra Samithi MLAs.
On Monday, a lawyer mentioned the contempt petition for urgent hearing, saying the speaker had not acted within the three-month deadline.
“The Speaker has not touched the matter, has not conducted any proceedings. The MLAs are continuing. Your lordships held if any MLA was trying to protract the proceedings, adverse inference would be drawn. Two petitions there.
The speaker has not touched them. Others are in the evidence stage,” the counsel submitted, seeking listing tomorrow. When the CJI agreed to list it next week, the counsel said that the respondents are dragging the proceedings till the end of the month for “obvious reasons”, implicitly referring to CJI Gavai’s retirement on November 23.
“Supreme Court will not close after the 24th of November,” CJI said. A bench comprising CJI Gavai and Justice AG Masih delivered the judgment in a batch of writ petitions filed by BRS leaders KT Rama Rao, Padi Kaushik Reddy, and KO Vivekanand in relation to the defection of ten BRS MLAs in Telangana to the Congress party.
The Court directed the Speaker of the Telangana Legislative Assembly to decide the petitions seeking their disqualification under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution within a period of three months from July 31.
