Hyderabad: Senior Congress leader and MLC Mohammad Ali Shabbir on Monday filed a writ petition in the High Court challenging the merger of Congress legislature Party in the Council with the ruling party. Congress MLCs Akula Lalitha, Santosh Kumar, MS Prabhakar Rao and K Damodar Reddy, who defected to the TRS, submitted a representation to the Council chairman K Swamy Goud seeking merger of Congress CLP into TRSLP as the majority of Congress members joined the ruling party.
Allowing their representation, Legislature Secretary Narasimhacharyulu issued orders on December 21 effecting merger of Congress group into TRS accordingly. Aggrieved by the Legislature order, former Leader of the Opposition Congress in the Council Shabbir Ali filed the writ petition in the Court of the Chief Justice. As the CJ Radhakrishnan was on leave, the petition is likely to come up for hearing on December 26.
In his petition, Shabbir Ali contended that the Council chairman was acting in an arbitrary manner and overlooking the basic principles of the Constitution. He also called on Council chairman Swamy Goud and urged him to take action against his party’s two rebel MLCs for defecting to the ruling TRS without tendering resignations from their MLC posts.
Shabbir Ali told mediapersons that “As per rules, only the Election Commission was competent to merge any political party with any one. The fourth para of schedule X does not talk about it. The draft related to the merger of the CLP was prepared in the CM’s office after Congress rebels met the CM and handed over the letter of merger to the Council Chairman.
[source_without_link]NSS[/source_without_link]