The Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved its verdict on the petition of a BJP MLA from Karnataka challenging the HC order allowing amendment in the petitions of 5 Independent MLAs disqualified by the Assembly Speaker.
A bench of Justices Altamas Kabir and Cyriac Joseph reserved the verdict after Independent MLAs’ lawyer rebutted the claim of BJP that they had joined the party.
The Independent claimed that at no stage had they joined the BJP and even the Speaker’s order had described them as Independents.
Under the rules if there is any change in the “character” of the legislature party it has to be brought to the notice of the Speaker within a month but during past two years nothing of the sort was done by the BJP, he said.
It amply made it clear that the Independents had never joined the party and continued to be Independents till they were “wrongly” disqualified by the Speaker, their counsel argued.
However, the apex court would decide the limited question whether the HC was right in allowing amendment in their petition regarding substitution of the words “they have not left BJP” with “they have not joined BJP”.
The words “they have not left Bharatiya Janata Party ”, according to Independents, had cropped in the petitions by mistake as they had coped certain paragraphs from the petitions of 11 Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs, also disqualified by the Speaker and it was a “bona fide” mistake, their lawyer claimed.
The BJP counsel earlier had claimed that the five Independents had in fact joined the party and they were attending the meetings of BJP legislature party regularly.