Goemkaponn Desk
PANAJI: Goa Legislative Assembly Speaker Rajesh Patnekar is all set to pass final order on pending disqualification petitions of Congress and MGP tomorrow.
The Apex Court had told the Speaker of Goa Legislative Assembly to pass order on April 20 on the petition filed by a Congress leader seeking disqualification of 10 MLAs, who had joined BJP in July 2019.
A bench of CJI SA Bobde & Justice AS Bopanna & Justice V Ramasubramanian posted the matter for further hearing on April 21 after it was told by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that the Speaker has agreed to pass the order on the disqualification petitions on April 20.
The Supreme Court said that there cannot be such long delays in passing orders & told Mehta that after April 24, this matter cannot be heard by the same combination.
Chodankar has sought directions to restrain the 10 MLAs from participating in Assembly proceedings during pendency of the disqualification petition.
The plea has also sought the apex court’s direction to restrain three MLAs — Chandrakant Kavalekar, Jennifer Monserrate and Filipe Rodrigues — from functioning as ministers in Goa during the pendency of disqualification petition.
The petitioner has said the matter was heard on February 13, 2020 but he has neither received any communication from the office of Speaker nor has he been intimated of any order being passed on the disqualification petition.
Referring to an apex court judgement, the plea said the Speaker is required to decide a petition of this nature ‘within a reasonable period of time, and in any case, absent exceptional circumstances, within a period of 3 months’
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