GDA takes Goan battle to SC
The BJP-led GDA took its battle against the denial of opportunity to form the next government to the SC when two MGP MLAs moved a petition challenging speaker Pratapsinh Rane’s decision to restrain them from participating in the trust vote in asse...
By TNN |
NEW DELHI: The BJP-led Goa Democratic Alliance (GDA) took its battle against the denial of opportunity to form the next government to the Supreme Court on Wednesday when two MGP MLAs moved a petition challenging speaker Pratapsinh Rane’s decision to restrain them from participating in the trust vote in the state assembly.
The remaining 18 GDA MLAs, including those belonging to the BJP, SGF, UGDP and an independent, are likely to follow suit on Thursday when they file another petition challenging the speaker’s decision and the manner in which the proceedings on the trust vote were conducted on Monday.
Seeking to put maximum pressure on the Manmohan Singh government to ensure that ’justice’ was done by sacking the Digambar Kamat government and inviting the GDA to form the next government in the state, alliance chairman and former minister Anil Salgaoncar simultaneously sought an appointment with President Pratibha Patil and Union minister Shivraj Patil to secure their intervention on the issue.
In their petition moved before a three-member bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, the two MGP MLAs — Sudin and his brother Dipak Dhavlikar — challenged “the legality of the last minute ex-parte ad-interim orders passed by the Goa assembly speaker,” which restrained them from voting on the confidence motion. The matter has been posted to Monday.
They claimed that they had not been given an opportunity by the speaker to present their side of the case. “Shockingly, the petitioners were not even served with a copy of the disqualification petition before the pronouncement of the order. The mala fides in the instant case are writ large in the manner in which the order was passed,” the two brothers contended. They questioned the speaker’s locus-standi in adjudicating the disqualification petition when there was a no-confidence motion pending against him. The petition also said there was no division of votes called for and “yet the speaker cast his deciding vote.”
The BJP, in the meanwhile, continued to train its guns on Congress president Sonia Gandhi, asserting that the developments in Goa had been orchestrated by her.
The remaining 18 GDA MLAs, including those belonging to the BJP, SGF, UGDP and an independent, are likely to follow suit on Thursday when they file another petition challenging the speaker’s decision and the manner in which the proceedings on the trust vote were conducted on Monday.
Seeking to put maximum pressure on the Manmohan Singh government to ensure that ’justice’ was done by sacking the Digambar Kamat government and inviting the GDA to form the next government in the state, alliance chairman and former minister Anil Salgaoncar simultaneously sought an appointment with President Pratibha Patil and Union minister Shivraj Patil to secure their intervention on the issue.
In their petition moved before a three-member bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, the two MGP MLAs — Sudin and his brother Dipak Dhavlikar — challenged “the legality of the last minute ex-parte ad-interim orders passed by the Goa assembly speaker,” which restrained them from voting on the confidence motion. The matter has been posted to Monday.
They claimed that they had not been given an opportunity by the speaker to present their side of the case. “Shockingly, the petitioners were not even served with a copy of the disqualification petition before the pronouncement of the order. The mala fides in the instant case are writ large in the manner in which the order was passed,” the two brothers contended. They questioned the speaker’s locus-standi in adjudicating the disqualification petition when there was a no-confidence motion pending against him. The petition also said there was no division of votes called for and “yet the speaker cast his deciding vote.”
The BJP, in the meanwhile, continued to train its guns on Congress president Sonia Gandhi, asserting that the developments in Goa had been orchestrated by her.
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