Chandigarh, April 20: Sticking to its earlier observation in the case, Punjab and Haryana High Court today asked the Haryana Vidhan Sabha Speaker to speedily dispose of the disqualification petition against five HJC MLAs who defected to the ruling Congress.
A division bench comprising Justice M M Kumar and Justice TPS Mann reiterated the observation made by the high court on March 1, 2011 and asked the Speaker Haryana Vidhan Sabha to dispose of the petition seeking disqualification of the Haryana Janhit Congress legislators in question as
expeditiously as possible.
The Judges allowed the application filed by Kuldeep Sharma, present Speaker Haryana Vidhan Sabha to pursue the appeal as an appellant, and took his affidavit to this effect on record.
Earlier, H S Chatha was the Vidhan Sabha Speaker, but he resigned and was inducted into the State Cabinet while Kuldeep Sharma was elected the new Speaker last month.
The bench ordered the appeals to be listed for arguments on April 29.
As the case came up for hearing, H S Hooda, Advocate General, Haryana, requested the court to adjourn the hearing of the case on the ground that Gopal Subramanium, Additional Solicitor General of India, who is representing the Vidhan Sabha Speaker, was not able to come to Chandigarh to argue the case.
Opposing this Satya Pal Jain, senior advocate and counsel for HJC President Kuldeep Bishnoi submitted that “It is a deliberate attempt on the part of the Haryana Government to prolong the matter of disqualification of 5 HJC defectors, as long as they can.”
He said that in January the direction given by the High Court to Speaker Haryana Vidhan Sabha was that the five disqualification petitions be decided within four months, the period of which was expiring tomorrow.
He submitted that the Supreme Court has already said in Mayawati’s case that the Speaker should decide on the disqualification petitions within three weeks.
Earlier, the High Court on December 20, 2010 on a petition filed by HJC chief and party MLA, Kuldeep Bishnoi, had directed the Speaker of the Haryana Vidhan Sabha to decide the disqualification petitions against five HJC MLAs–Sat Pal Sangwan, Vinod Bhayana, Nafe Singh, Zile Singh and Dharam
Singh, who joined the ruling Congress after the October 2009 assembly polls, within four months.
This order has been challenged by the Speaker Haryana Vidhan Sabha and all the five HJC defectors MLAs by way of present appeals.
——-PTI