Daijiworld Media Network – Bangalore (SP)

Bangalore, Feb 2: The full bench of Karnataka High Court, which conducted hearing into the disqualification of independent legislators, has reserved its judgment. The hearing, which continued for about three months, came to an end on Tuesday February 1. The judges of the bench, Justice Mohan Shantana Goudar, Justice A S Bopanna, and Justice Abdul Nazir, are expected to pronounce the verdict in the case within a few days from now.

The sudden move of the assembly speaker, K G Bopaiah, to disqualify 11 BJP and five independent MLAs on October 10 last, had come as a rude shock to the opposition, who had planned to topple the government with the support of disgruntled MLAs. On the same day, writ petitions had been filed in the High Court by all the disqualified legislators, questioning the speaker’s move.

The pro-BJP advocates relied heavily on the sentence, ‘we had never deserted BJP’ in the affidavits submitted by the independent MLAs, to justify the disqualification. It is thought that this sentence came to sneak in, as all the writ petitions, including those of the dissident BJP legislators, were prepared from a single draft. In October 2010 itself, the High Court through a split verdict, upheld the disqualification of 11 BJP MLAs.

As per the instruction of the HC, all the records pertaining to the independent legislators were submitted by the assembly speaker to it in a sealed cover on Tuesday.  Through another application, advocates for the assembly speaker have requested HC to examine whether the HC is in order in scrutinizing the files processed by the assembly speaker.