Team Goemkarponn
Congressman Girish Chodankar filed a special leave plea on Friday, asking the Supreme Court to disqualify eight MLAs who switched to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in September 2022. The court ordered that notice be sent to the defendants.
The matter regarding its admission will now be heard on April 29 by the bench consisting of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar. It has also been linked to Chodankar’s previous 2022 plea.
All eight defector-MLAs—Digambar Kamat, Michael Lobo, Aleixo Sequeira, Kedar Naik, Rudolf Fernandes, Delilah Lobo, Rajesh Phaldesia, and Sankalp Amonkar—have been assigned respondents in the SLP after Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar rejected Chodankar’s request for their disqualification.
Chodankar, who had submitted the plea before Tawadkar in 2022, had accused the Speaker of needlessly postponing the resolution of his petitions while it was pending, first before the HC and then the SC.
On November 1st of last year, Tawadkar eventually resolved the petitions, ruling that the eight MLAs’ defection was permitted under the guidelines for “merger” of parties in the Xth Schedule, but only after receiving a directive from the Supreme Court. Chodankar is currently attempting to contest Tawadkar’s order from November 1st through the present SLP before the SC.
