High Court asks BJP MLAs to approach SC

Nominated MLAs had approached the court over denial of entry into the House

The Madras High Court on Monday said Bharatiya Janata Party members V. Saminathan, K.G. Shankar and S. Selvaganapathy would have to approach the Supreme Court if they were not being allowed to enter the Legislative Assembly, as claimed by them, despite a judgment passed by the High Court in their favour.

Since it was represented that there was an appeal against the High Court judgment delivered on March 22, the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice Abdul Quddhose said that it would only be appropriate to approach the Supreme Court if there was any wilful disobedience of the verdict.

Although a counsel representing the nominated MLAs sought early hearing of a contempt of court application filed against the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly and claimed that the Supreme Court had not stayed the operation of the High Court judgment, the Chief Justice asked him to make a mention before the Supreme Court.

Notification upheld

On March 22, the High Court had upheld the validity of a notification issued by the Centre on June 23, 2017 nominating three BJP members to the Puducherry Assembly and held that the three could take their seats in the House.

The orders were passed while dismissing a writ petition filed by K. Lakshminarayanan, whip of the Congress, who sought to forbear the Centre from nominating MLAs on its own without following the “convention” of accepting the choice of the Council of Ministers.

Then, the court had dismissed a public interest litigation petition filed by S. Dhanalakshmi, a voter from Puducherry, to declare Section 3(3) of the Government of Union Territories Act of 1963, the legal provision under which the nominations were made by the Centre, as well as the June 23 notification as unconstitutional.

Passing a common judgment, the judges allowed three individual writ petitions filed by the nominated MLAs and quashed an order passed by the Assembly Speaker V. Vaithilingam on November 12, 2017 refusing to accept their nominations. The Bench said that no provision of law empowered the Speaker to pass such an order.

The court ruled that the argument on conventional practice would have to fall to the ground because sufficient material was not placed before the court “to conclusively decide whether this procedure was construed to be so sanctus... so as to attain the status of a constitutional convention as contend.”

Plea rejected

It was held that there was no need for the President or the Administrator (Lieutenant Governor) to have issued the notification nominating the MLAs since it was the President who had framed the Government of India (Allocation of Business) Rules of 1961 and allocated issues related to nomination MLAs to the Union Home Ministry.

In so far as the challenge to constitutionality of Section 3(3) of the Act was concerned, the Bench said the courts could not strike down a provision of law on mere apprehension that it could be misused since it confers “unfettered, unguided and uncontrolled” discretionary powers on the Centre on the issue of nominating MLAs.