Panaji: The Bombay High Court at Goa on Wednesday dismissed a petition filed by the Congress seeking disqualification of the Health Minister Vishwajit Rane.
In their order, Jusices G.S. Patel and N.D. Sardesai said that the petitioners’ position was in conflict vis a vis the role of the Speaker in the resignation of Mr. Rane as a legislator elected on a Congress ticket during the Assembly elections in February this year.
“The Petition takes up two conflicting positions, simultaneously. These cannot co-exist. There is a challenge, as we have seen, to the Speaker’s acceptance of Vishwajit’s resignation. But if that acceptance is bad, then the Speaker must have jurisdiction,” the judgement said.
“Yet the Petition says the Speaker does not have jurisdiction; and he does not have it because he accepted Vishwajit’s resignation, i.e., that the acceptance of the resignation is good,” the order also says, adding that the petitioners “cannot maintain that the Speaker’s acceptance of the resignation is simultaneously both good and bad”.
The petition filed by Congress MLAs in May sought the disqualification of Mr. Rane, under Article 226 of the Constitution.
The petition claimed that the Health Minister and then pro-tem Speaker Sidharth Kunkolienkar had flouted legislative procedure on March 16, the day of the present government’s floor test, by allowing Mr. Rane to resign from membership of the House in defiance of a whip which had been promulgated by the Opposition benches.
Mr. Rane, one of the 17 elected Congress MLAs, had defied the party whip and resigned from the Congress as well as from the House on March 16, on the day when the Manohar Parrikar-led government was facing a floor test.
Mr. Rane later criticised the Congress leadership for failing to form a government despite being single largest party after February elections, before formally joining the BJP a few weeks later. He was later sworn in as Health Minister in April and won the by-election from Valpoi constituency of North Goa in August on a BJP ticket.
