The hearing on a plea filed by Congress rebel Sachin Pilot and 18 of his loyalist MLAs against Speaker’s disqualification notice before the Rajasthan High Court will resume on Tuesday.
A Bench of Chief Justice Indrajit Mahanty and Justice Prakash Gupta said the hearing will conclude on July 21 and thereafter the court will pronounce the judgment.
The marathon hearing remained inconclusive on Monday as both sides argued for a decision in favour of their respective clients. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, senior lawyer and the counsel for the Rajasthan Assembly Speaker, said that the petition filed by Pilot and 18 of his loyalist MLAs was premature given the fact that a decision on their disqualification was still pending.
Singhvi said the High Court can’t have interference over the showcause notices issued by the Speaker to the members of the House. The counsel for Sachin Pilot and the team, however, argued that party whip applies only when the Assembly is in session.
Pilot’s counsel Harish Salve told the court the party member is free to defy whip direction outside the House.
Singhvi said the court has no jurisdiction in the case just yet. “The Speaker may or may not pass a correct decision. But there cannot be any interference at the pre-order stage pre-empting that the Speaker will take a wrong decision,” Singhvi said.
He termed the rebels’ case “much worse” as there were no new grounds of challenge. “The petitioners, in an ‘over-clever’ way, have raised the same grounds of challenge that were considered and rejected by the Supreme Court,” he argued.
To the rebels saying they cannot be construed to have abandoned the party for making statements and not attending meetings, Singhvi said the “voluntary giving up of party membership” needed to be read widely.
“There is no need for formal resignation; giving up of membership can be inferred from conduct. There is no straight-jacket approach for the Speaker to decide (under the Constitution),” he said.
There is no fixed formula. So how to take a decision is within the Speaker’s domain, he said.
Not being present at a legislature party meeting can be construed as giving up membership of the party, but the Speaker has to decide, Singhvi argued.
The senior lawyer who is also a Rajya Sabha member said, referring to team Pilot, “Unprincipled defection is a political sin and against constitutional morality.”
Salve on his part said intra-party dissent, however shrill it may be, until the moment it goes to the extent of supporting another party, cannot be a ground to even start disqualification proceedings under the 10th schedule.
“If a group of MLAs says that the party president is incompetent, and the party president complains to the Speaker that they have defected, and the Speaker issues notice for disqualification, can they not approach the court against it?” Salve further stated.
“Even if the complainant’s allegations are assumed to be true, they will only constitute a case of inner-party dissent. No case under the 10th schedule. Issuing disqualification notice for inner-party dissent is a violation of freedom of speech of the legislator,” Salve added.
“A party member is free to defy the party whip direction outside the House. Kihoto nowhere says that defying party whip outside the House amounts to defection. Intra-party dissent, however shrill it may be, until the moment it goes to the extent of supporting another party, cannot be a ground to even start disqualification proceedings under 10th schedule,” Salve told Rajasthan High Court in defence of Pilot and dissidents MLAs.
The Speaker had issued disqualification notices to 19 rebel Congress MLAs, including Pilot after a complaint by the ruling Congress party for defying a whip to attend the Legislative Party meeting and sought action under paragraph 2(1) (a) of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution. This disqualifies MLAs if they “voluntarily give up” the membership of the party that they represent in the House.
Pilot was sacked as the Rajasthan Deputy Chief Minister and the president of the State Congress unit after he rebelled against Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot. Speaker CP Joshi has given the rebel MLAs up to 5.30 pm to reply to disqualification notices, which the dissident camp wants the court to quash.