Appeal against setting aside of Telangana Congress MLAs expulsion not maintainable: HC

A Division Bench of the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh High Court has held that a petition challenging the order of a single judge, who set aside the expulsion of two Telangana Congress MLAs, is not maintainable.

Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and A Sampath Kumar were expelled for disorderly behavior during Governor ESL Narasimhan’s joint address to both houses of Assembly on March 12 this year.

Their membership was however restored by an order passed by Justice B Siva Sankara Rao in April, who held that principles of natural justice had not been followed leading up to their expulsion.

This order was challenged by eleven Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) legislators, before a Division Bench of Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice K Vijaya Lakshmi.

Appearing for the petitioners, Senior Counsel CS Vaidyanathan had argued that the TRS MLAs constituted “necessary parties” to the appeal as they had been part of the resolution that expelled the Congress MLAs.

The Court took the view that given that though the expulsion was a collective decision of the House, it was only the House through its appropriate representatives that was vested with a right to appeal.

“It is only the State Legislature which can prefer an appeal, if it is aggrieved by the order of the Learned Single Judge interdicting its decision to expel the respondent-writ petitioners as members of the House.”

The Bench observed that should such a right of appeal be seen to be available to individual members of the institution who had voted one way, then that right would apply to those that had voted either for or against a motion, and that this was not constitutionally envisaged .

Holding that it was only the Legislative Assembly as a whole which could claim to be an aggrieved party, the Bench held that a third party  could only appeal if they had prior leave.

“A person who is a party can appeal without any leave, and a person who, without being a party, is either bound by the order or is aggrieved by it, or is prejudicially affected by it, cannot appeal without leave.”

The Bench held that the appellants did not constitute “necessary parties”, and that the appeal should have been filed by a party representing the House as a collective.

Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Ravi Shankar Jandhyala appeared for the respondents.

K Ravinder Reddy, who was the Advocate on Record (AOR) for the appellants said that an appeal against this ruling was likely.

Read the order