Controversy over Jharkhand Assembly Speaker Dinesh Oraon revoking membership of JMM legislator Yogendra Mahto following the latter’s conviction and sentencing in a criminal case has reached Raj Bhawan.
JMM’s executive president and leader of Opposition Hemant Soren approached Governor Droupadi Murmu seeking her intervention in the matter and for reinstating the membership of Mahto.
A delegation led by Soren on Friday called on the Governor and submitted a memorandum giving details of the case. The petition made a detailed reference about the January 31 decision of the court of Ramgarh that had found the MlA guilty in a coal theft case.
“You are the Constitutional head of the State. We would like to draw your attention that before announcing disqualification of the member the Speaker did not follow the set Constitutional provisions. Article 192 (1) of the Constitution says that membership of any Assembly member can be ended only after approval of the Governor. This has not been followed in this case,” said the memorandum.
In fact, the Speaker following the court’s conviction order had issued a notification from the Assembly secretariat on February 2 disqualifying Mahto from the membership of the House and subsequently apprised the Election Commission about this. However, a major twist in the case came with Additional Sessions Court putting the sentencing on hold.
The party while terming the notification issued by the Assembly unconstitutional, alleged that the Speaker acted in haste. “The higher court was to hear the petition filed by the member on February 19 but the Assembly did not wait and issued the order for disqualification. The act of the Speaker generates sufficient suspicion and it seems that he was under any political pressure to decide the matter hurriedly. It proved right when the higher court suspended execution of the order passed by the lower court,” said Soren.
He also referred some of the decisions made by various courts in similar cases wherein memberships of the aggrieved legislators have been restored.
“The Supreme Court’s decisions in lalsai Khunte vs Nirmal Sinha, Ravikant S Patil vs Sarvabhama S Bangli, lili Thomson vs Union of India and Allahabad High Court order in the lok Prahari vs UP are some of the examples where memberships have been reinstated. The party has demanded from the Governor to do justice in this case as well and quash the notification of the Assembly in the light of the facts put in place. This is the need of the hour in order to protect the Constitution which is expected of the Governor,” said Soren.
On the other hand, the Assembly Secretariat maintained that it was incumbent upon it to issue the notification and apprise the Election Commission, Home Department and other concerned agencies within seven days of getting the information about disqualification.
“The argument that the Governor was not informed does not hold any water. It has to be done in such cases where the decision to disqualify any member is to be taken based on a petition like office or profit, model code violation and so on. Any judicial order in legislator’s conviction case is self operative in nature and needs not be sent to the Governor for approval,” said an official of the Assembly secretariat.
Nevertheless, the website of Jharkhand Vidhan Sabha still shows Yogendra Mahto as a member of the House and JMM’s strength 19 in the House of 82!
“This is a technical glitch on the part of NIC which is converting entire content on cloud based system. We would soon update the content,” said the official.