Rajasthan Crisis: The Speaker will challenge the High Court’s “delay and intervention” in the Supreme Court.
Jaipur/ New Delhi, July 22:
Asked by a court to defer action against Sachin Pilot and other Congress rebels, the Rajasthan Speaker said today he would approach the Supreme Court to “avert a constitutional crisis”.
Speaker CP Joshi, who served disqualification notices to 19 rebel MLAs including Sachin Pilot for “anti-party activities” last week, was first asked to defer action by three days last week. The Rajasthan High Court yesterday said it would announce on Friday its decision on the rebels’ petition challenging the notices, and requested that action against them be deferred till then.
The Speaker will challenge the High Court’s “delay and intervention” in the Supreme Court. “It is well-defined by the Supreme Court that only the Speaker can decide on anti-defection. The Speaker had full authority to send notice,” CP Joshi told the media.
“It can be judicially reviewed only later, after the Speaker’s decision,” he said, calling the rebels’ petition a dangerous precedent and a possible breakdown of constitutional rules.
Team Sachin Pilot got its second three-day breather after the High Court finished hearing arguments yesterday on the rebels’ challenge to the Speaker’s disqualification notices.
The notices were served after the rebels did not attend to meetings of Congress MLAs, which was construed as defying a whip.
The rebels have argued that no whip can be in place when the assembly is not in session. They also told the court they had no plans to quit the party and only wanted a change in its Rajasthan leadership, read Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot. The Speaker’s argument was that a notice cannot be under court jurisdiction until action is taken.
The Speaker’s move to seek the Supreme Court’s intervention to restore his right to take action against the rebels comes alongside speculation that Ashok Gehlot is keen on a test of strength in the Rajasthan assembly.
Mr Gehlot claims he has the support of 102 MLAs, one more than the majority mark.
If team Pilot’s 19 MLAs are disqualified, the majority mark will come down, giving the Chief Minister much more room to win.
If the rebels, however, win the High Court case against the notices and continue to be Congress members, they can vote against the government and cause huge trouble for Mr Gehlot.
Team Pilot has 19 members, and along with the BJP’s 72, can give the government a close fight. With independents and smaller parties, the opposition tally is at 97.
Yesterday, the Speaker’s counsel indicated to reporters that he would defer action against the MLAs in the spirit of “mutual respect” between the two institutions.
