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Kumar had disqualified these 17 MLAs, leading to the fall of the Congress-JD(S) coalition government headed by the then chief minister H D Kumaraswamy.
Kumaraswamy had resigned after losing a trust vote, which paved the way for the BJP-led government in the state under B S Yediyurappa
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the office of the Karnataka Assembly Speaker, told a bench headed by Justice N V Ramana that under the scheme of Constitution, a lawmaker has a right to resign and speaker should accept it. The current Assembly Speaker is V Hegde Kageri.
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Mehta said that a lawmaker not only has a duty but also a right to resign as a member of the House.
“Under the scheme of the Constitution, as I have read, a legislator has the right to resign. Except the contingency provided in Article 190(3), there is no room for resignation being rejected,” he told the bench.
Article 190 (3) of the Constitution envisages that the Speaker or the Chairman of the Assembly has to only ascertain whether the resignation of a lawmaker is voluntary and genuine and if not, he will not accept such resignations.
The apex court is hearing a batch of petitions filed by the 17 MLAs challenging the then speaker’s decision to disqualify them from the Assembly.
During the arguments, senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for H D Kumaraswamy, raised a point before the bench that if disqualification application indicates that resignation tendered by an MLA is not pure, can the Speaker ignore it.
“Can the speaker ignore the fact that there is something wrong with the resignation?” he said, adding that the Speaker has the right to go into the motive behind the resignation.
Dhavan said that advocates representing these disqualified MLAs have contended that Speaker should accept the resignation mechanically and this is a “very strange argument”.
He said if there is some material on the basis of which the order of Speaker disqualifying these MLAs is valid, then the court should not deal with the petitions.
Dealing with the arguments advanced by the petitioners that Speaker should not have gone into the motive behind their resignations, Dhavan said, “their entire case is about motive. Why should motive be not examined?”