Speaker's action can be questioned: SC

NEW DELHI: That the judiciary is in no mood to allow Constitutional functionaries to make extravagant claims about their authority was clear on Thursday when a Constitution Bench of the SC rejected arguments that actions of the Speaker of a legislature were beyond scrutiny.

The court said such a proposition was not acceptable as the Speaker cannot be considered to be absolutely impartial since he does not sever his relationship from the political party on whose ticket he was elected to the House.

“Unlike in other countries, a legislator after getting elected as the Speaker does not resign from the political party from which he had been elected to the House, so the argument cannot be sustained,” the five-member Bench remarked.

These observations of the court came during the hearing of the arguments on the Constitutional validity of the split engineered by 37 legislators of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh to facilitate Mulayam Singh Yadav’s forming a government in August, 2003.

The Uttar Pradesh government’s counsel, Ashok Desai had argued that the Speaker of a House, by virtue of his Constitutional status, is held in high esteem and hence his actions cannot be questioned in any court of law.

Justifying the split in the BSP and its recognition by the Speaker, Mr Desai submitted that courts did not have a role in judging the Speaker’s decision. “It is for the Speaker to decide.

Intercession by the courts should be minimal unless his (Speaker’s) action are perverse,” he maintained. Responding to this assertion, the court made an observation about the supremacy of the judiciary.

The UP’s counsel relied heavily on the ruling given for legitimising splits during the Narasimha Rao government in Delhi. “A split cannot be instantaneous, but is a continuous process within a reasonable time,” he said.