Why in news?
18 MLAs in Tamil Nadu were disqualified by the Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker.
What was the reason?
- The disqualified legislators belong to a faction of the AIADMK that opposes to the ruling dispensation.
- They gave a memorandum to the Governor expressing lack of confidence in the present Chief Minister.
- The Speaker interpreted it as amounting to “voluntarily giving up” their party membership.
What was the hidden agenda?
- It is seen as a partisan decision aimed at securing a majority, after a rebellion within its party reduced it to a minority.
- It reduced the total membership of the House from 233 to 215 and, thereby, the majority threshold from 117 to 108.
- The Speaker’s ruling comes at a time when there is an increasingly indefensible reluctance on the part of the Governor to order a floor test.
Can there be a judicial review?
- Tenth Schedule of the Constitution prescribes two conditions under which a member of a political party may be disqualified –
- voluntarily giving up their membership
- when a whip is disobeyed
- The Speaker’s decision under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution is subject to judicial review.
- If it is challenged, the courts will have to decide whether legislators withdrawing support to their own party’s government amounts to voluntarily giving up their membership.
- In Balchandra L. Jarkiholi & Others v. B.S. Yeddyurappa (2011), the Supreme Court, in similar circumstances, quashed the disqualification of 11 MLAs in Karnataka.
- While such legal and constitutional questions may be decided judicially, political morality has suffered a blow in the State.
Source: The Hindu
