Khushi Doshi
Published on: March 02, 2022 at 11:33 IST
The Maharashtra assembly’s budget session begins, and all eyes will be on the status of 12 BJP MLAs whose one-year disqualification was overturned by the Supreme Court in January.
Maha Vikas Aghadi told that the Judgement raised a number of procedural and Constitutional questions about the powers and Jurisdictions of the Speaker, the legislature, and the Judiciary, and that it needed to be studied on how and who could decide on implementing the Supreme Court order.
At this point, “it is proving extremely difficult” to make a decision. An MVA leader stated that it would take the House’s collective opinion to even begin proceedings to look into the issues involved with the SC order.
Last July, then-presiding officer Bhaskar Jadhav suspended the 12 BJP MLAs for a year for “unruly behaviour” after the House passed a resolution to that effect. In January, the Supreme Court ruled that suspending MLAs beyond that session was ‘unconstitutional and irrational.’
A delegation of suspended BJP MLAs recently met with Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and asked him to act on the Supreme Court order.
The CM, however, is said to have remained non-committal. “There is no easy way out here,” said an MVA official, citing “tricky issues.”
The decision to suspend the 12 MLAs was made by a standby presiding officer who could not decide on the SC order involving the Speaker’s larger institution. The deputy Speaker, an NCP nominee, faces a similar challenge, according to an MVA insider.
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