Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, July 22: The Supreme Court would on Thursday hear a plea of Rajasthan Assembly Speaker C P Joshi against the high court order restraining him till July 24 from conducting disqualification proceedings against 19 dissident Congress MLAs, including sacked deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot.
As per the list of business uploaded on the Supreme Court website for July 23, a bench of Justices Arun Mishra, B R Gavai and Krishna Murari would hear the plea.
Earlier, in the day Speaker C P Joshi moved the top court against the Rajasthan High Court order saying the “judiciary was never expected” to intervene in such matters resulting in “constitutional impasse”.
Seeking an interim stay on the high court’s July 21 order, the plea has said that it was the duty of the top court to ensure that all constitutional authorities exercise their jurisdiction within the boundaries and respect their “respective ‘lakshman rekha’ as envisaged by the Constitution itself”.
The High Court had said on Tuesday that it would deliver its order on July 24 on a petition filed by Pilot and 18 other MLAs, challenging the disqualification notices sent to them. It asked the Speaker to defer the disqualification proceedings till then.
The Speaker, in his plea filed through advocate Sunil Fernandes, has said that the disqualification process is part of the Assembly proceedings and hence, the high court could not have interfered by asking him to defer it till Friday.
Later, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who was appearing before a bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde in another matter, raised the issue of having a mechanism in the top court for urgent mentioning and listing of petitions like the one filed by the Rajasthan Assembly Speaker.
The CJI told Sibal to raise the issue of urgent listing before the apex court registry.
The Speaker’s counsel had twice before agreed to the high court’s “request” to extend the deadline for receiving replies from the MLAs to the show cause notices.
Pilot and 18 dissident Congress MLAs have challenged their disqualification notices in the high court.
The notices to MLAs were served after the party complained to the Speaker that the legislators had allegedly defied a whip to attend two Congress Legislature Party meetings, on Monday and Tuesday last week.
The Pilot camp, however, has argued that a party whip applies only when the Assembly is in session.
In its complaint to the Legislative Assembly Speaker, the Congress had sought action against Pilot and the other dissidents under paragraph 2(1)(a) of the 10th Schedule of the Constitution.
Pilot was sacked as deputy chief minister and the president of the state unit of the party after he rebelled against Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot.
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