Mumbai: Former Speaker of Maharashtra assembly Haribhau Bagde on Tuesday raised questions on the premise over which the Shiv Sena (UBT) has been demanding disqualification of 16 breakaway MLAs including Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
The Shiv Sena (UBT) had been demanding disqualification of 16 MLAs, who had gone to Guwahati, for not attending a party meet and thereby disobeying the party whip. However, Bagde, a BJP MLA from Phulambri constituency of Aurangabad district who was Speaker of the house from 2014 to 2019, said that the premise appears to be wrong as the whip is not exercised for a meeting held outside the house.
“I haven’t seen (in my whole career) a whip being exercised for a meeting of MLAs outside the house and one doesn’t involve voting,” Bagde said while interacting with media at the state BJP headquarters here.
A new twist in the political saga
Bagde’s comment has given a new twist to the debate on disqualification of MLAs. “Generally whip is exercised only when a meeting of the house involves voting. There are other instances, like when the party members are supposed to vote in a particular manner, like the election of members of Rajya Sabha or the Legislative Council. But, in matter demanding disqualification of 16 MLAs, there doesn’t seem to be any such cause involved,” Bagde added.
“When the meeting doesn’t involve voting and is basically not the meeting of the house but, meeting of party members, I fail to understand, how the whip can be drawn and exercised,” Bagde said.
Bagde on procedural aspects involved in deciding the case
When asked about the procedural aspects involved in deciding the case, Bagde said, it is as per the routine process of natural justice. “The Speaker will send notices to all the MLAs concerned with a specific time to respond to the notices. Then study the responses and pronounce his decision,” he said adding it is a lengthy process.
Speaker Adv. Rahul Narvekar, had earlier said that he has petitions from all the 54 MLAs before him in the case and that he will study all of them and then start sending notices to the MLAs in order to complete the whole process to decide whether or not to disqualify the 16 MLAs.
When asked as to how long this ‘reasonable period’ might be, former Principle Secretary to the Maharahstra legislature Dr Anant Kalse said, “One can roughly say that the process for one notice may take at least a week.”
This means, by simple arithmetic, that the whole process to decide on disqualification of MLAs can ‘reasonably’ extend for more than a year.
