Supreme Court on Tuesday gave a rude shock to Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao government by referring the issue of defection of over 20 MLAs of the Telugu Desam Party and the Congress into the Telangana Rashtra Samithi to a larger Constitutional bench.
KCR, who blatantly and brazenly encouraged defection of the Opposition party MLAs into the TRS in the name of “realignment of political forces,” sought to get away with it by arguing in the court that the decision on disqualifying the defecting MLAs was the prerogative of the Speaker of the Assembly and the courts cannot interfere into the matter.
When the Advocate General conveyed the same to the court and said the Speaker would take a decision at an appropriate time, the Supreme Court bench made strong comments saying there was no faith on the Speaker to act on the disqualification of the defectors.
“Just because the Speaker has the powers to decide, he cannot sit on the petitions for months together,” the apex court argued.
The fact that the Supreme Court referred the issue to a larger bench is an indication that it has taken the matter seriously. Moreover, the court agreed with the argument of the petitioner, Congress MLA Sampath Kumar, that the defection of MLAs into another party without resigning their assembly membership was anti-constitutional.
If the larger bench gives a verdict against KCR, it is a big shock to even to his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu, who had also engineered defection of several YSR Congress party MLAs into the Telugu Desam Party. So, will they learn any lesson?
