New Delhi : The reverberations of the ongoing political tussle in the state of Karnataka will once again reverberate in the Supreme Court as a bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose will hear the rebel MLAs’ plea on Tuesday.
The top court last week had restrained Karnataka Assembly Speaker Ramesh Kumar from taking any decision on the resignation of the dissenting MLAs. Ordering status quo to be maintained, it had agreed to hear the matter on Tuesday. This after the rebel MLAs had moved the top court and had alleged that the Speaker was deliberately delaying the process of accepting their resignations. They had further alleged that the Speaker had questioned their decision to approach Supreme Court in the matter and that had said ‘go to hell’ to them in front of the media.
The Speaker too had filed a plea in the top court seeking more time in deciding on the resignations. In the past few days since Supreme Court had asked for the status quo to be maintained, Congress and Janata Dal Secular have continued with efforts to placate their respective MLAs who have tendered their resignations. The political drama has been played out also in Mumbai where a number of Congress leaders have attempted to meet the rebel MLAs – holed up in a city hotel here, but all to no avail. These MLAs even wrote to Mumbai Police saying they felt threatened and that they were not interested in meeting anyone from Congress or JDS.
The main issue at hand is that if the rebel MLAs hold their ground and the Speaker eventually opts to accept their resignations, the coalition government of Congress and JDS in Karnataka could stare at an ouster. The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday had submitted a letter to the Karnataka Speaker asking for a No-Confidence Motion against the HD Kumaraswamy-led government. This is scheduled to be discussed on Thursday.
Prasanta Patnaik