The Supreme Court on February 4 provided the Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker P. Dhanapal a week’s time to validate when he will take cognisance of disqualification petitions filed under the Tenth Set up (anti-defection law) versus Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam and 10 other AIADMK MLAs for voting versus the self-confidence movement moved by Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami in February 2017.
A three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India S.A. Bobde asked Tamil Nadu Advocate General Vijay Narayan and State Additional Advocate General Jayanth Muthuraj to confer with the Speaker and report back on February 14.
The court questioned the Speaker’s inaction, consistently asking why he kept the disqualification petitions pending for three entire years without even releasing notification.
” The three-year hold-up was unneeded. You (Speaker) needed to have actually acted. Prime facie, if there is inactiveness on the part of the Speaker, it has to be treated,” Chief Justice Bobde dealt with Mr. Narayan.
Speaker’s jurisdiction
Nevertheless, the court made it clear that it had no objective to “g