[BREAKING] Bombay High Court dismisses pleas seeking disqualification of 12 Goa MLAs for alleged defection to BJP

The Bombay High Court at Goa on Thursday dismissed petitions seeking disqualification of 12 Members of the Goa Legislative Assembly for alleged defection from Congress party and Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) to Bharatiya Janata Party in 2019..A Bench of Justices Manish Pitale and RN Laddha upheld the order passed by the Speaker of the Goa Legislative Assembly on the ground that the merger was deemed and hence the members ought not be disqualified."The Speaker proceeded on the basis that, so long as there was no dispute that two-thirds members of the legislature parties of the INC and the MGP had placed material on record that they had agreed for merger of their original political party with the BJP, the deeming fiction came into operation, resulting in protection of respondents from disqualification. Once this position is accepted, no error can be attributed to the final decisions rendered by the Speaker," the 89-page order stated..The petitions were filed by Congress MLA Girish Chodankar and MGP MLA Sudin Dhavalikar.The factual matrix in Chodankar's plea was that 10 members claiming to be two- thirds of the legislative party of Congress in the assembly, decided to join the BJP in July 2019. The speaker, accordingly, allotted them seats along with BJP members.Chodankar instituted a petition seeking disqualification of the members as they had voluntarily given up membership of their original party, Congress.After a preliminary enquiry and examination of written statements by the members, the speaker dismissed the petition on April 24, 2021.The speaker observed that since two-third members of Congress decided to merge with the BJP, the deeming fiction operated as per paragraph 4(2) of the Tenth Schedule, thus saving the members from disqualification.Meanwhile in Dhavalikar's plea, 2 members from the regional party voluntarily gave up membership claiming they had merged with BJP. This grievance was raised by Dhavalikar before the Speaker, who dismissed the disqualification petition on April 20, 2021 on the ground that there was a deemed merger of the MGP with the BJP and hence, no disqualification could happen..The petitioners challenged the orders in the High Court raising the question of political morality and whether the orders passed by the speaker are in furtherance of the object with which the Tenth Schedule was introduced in the Constitution.The Tenth Schedule was a law brought in to limit the frequent defections of members of a political party to another political party..The Bench opined that split of a political party as it existed and merger of the original political party with another political party are distinct concepts and not to be confused with each other. "As long as Parliament in its wisdom has determined the threshold of morality of at least two-thirds members of the legislature party agreeing for merger, the Courts have nothing else to go by, except the legislative wisdom of the parliament to determine such a threshold of political morality in that context," the Bench stated in its order. The Court stated that as long as the specific condition of not less than two-thirds members of the legislature party agreeing to merge is satisfied, it is politically and Constitutionally moral to protect the member of the House from disqualification..Polls to elect the new 40-member Goa Assembly were held on February 14 this year and the counting votes will be done on March 10..[Read judgment]