Karnataka Crisis: Five More Rebel Congress MLAs Move Supreme Court

Five more rebel Congress’ Karnataka Members of the Legislative Assembly moved the Supreme Court against the Speaker not accepting their resignation.

Anand Singh, K Sudhakar, N Nagaraj, Munirathna and Roshan Baig sought impleadment in the already pending application filed by the 10 other rebel MLAs for which the hearing is scheduled on Tuesday.

These 10 rebel MLAs of the Congress- JD(S) coalition who moved the apex court earlier alleging that the Speaker was not accepting their resignations were Pratap Gouda Patil, Ramesh Jarkiholi, Byrati Basavaraj, B C Patil, S T Somashekhar, Arbail Shivaram Hebbar, Mahesh Kumathalli, K Gopalaiah, A H Vishwanath and Narayana Gowda.

Hearing their plea, the Supreme Court had on Friday restrained Karnataka Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar from taking any decision till Tuesday on the resignation and disqualification of these 10 MLAs.

Citing “weighty issues that have arisen”, the apex court said it will consider the matter on July 16 and ordered that the status quo as of Friday should be maintained. The resignation of these MLAs has plunged the HD Kumaraswamy government in Karanataka into a crisis as it faces the risk losing majority in the Assembly.

Apart from the question of maintainability of the writ petition filed under Article 32 of the Constitution by the MLAs, the apex court had said it needs to address as to whether the Speaker is obligated to decide on disqualification proceedings before accepting the resignations of MLAs.

The counsel for the rebel MLAs had contended that the Speaker has not decided on the resignations of the lawmakers to bind them with the party whip and disqualify them from the membership if they violate the whip on the floor of the House.