Courts can fix timelines for disqualification petitions: SC

Constitutional courts can fix timelines for Speakers to decide disqualification petitions under the anti-defection law, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, warning that protracted delays by high constitutional functionaries were eroding the democratic fabric and defeating the purpose of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, which sought to curb political defections.

- UtkarshAnand

In a landmark verdict aimed at preserving the integrity of India’s anti-defection framework and reinforcing judicial oversight over legislative inaction, a bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Bhushan R Gavai and justice AG Masih held that while courts cannot injunct Speakers from deciding such petitions, they can issue directions to facilitate decisions within a reasonable time, especially when Speakers fail to act.

The apex court's ruling came as it held that the Telangana Speaker must decide within three months the disqualification petitions against 10 defecting Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) legislators who joined the state's ruling Congress last year. The court warned that it would no longer allow “a widely criticised situation of operation successful, patient dead.”

While the court declined a direct adjudication of the disqualification question noting that the Speaker remains the primary authority under the Tenth Schedule, it criticised the seven-month delay in even issuing notices in the matter and lamented the betrayal of parliamentary trust that expected Speakers to act “fearlessly and expeditiously.”

“The only purpose of entrusting the work of adjudicating disqualification petitions to the Speaker was to avoid dillydallying in the courts of law or the Election Commission's office...But with the experience of over 30 years, we must ask whether the trust Parliament placed in Speakers to avoid delays has been honoured,” it lamented.