The Supreme Court is set to hear a contempt petition on November 17 against the Telangana assembly speaker, who has allegedly failed to act on disqualification pleas against 10 BRS MLAs who defected to the ruling Congress.
On July 31, a bench led by Chief Justice B. R. Gavai had ordered the speaker to decide the disqualification matter within three months.
On Monday, a lawyer flagged the contempt petition, noting that the speaker had allegedly “dragged the proceedings till the end of the month for obvious reasons,” an apparent reference to CJI Gavai’s retirement on November 23.
“List it next Monday,” the Chief Justice said. “The Supreme Court will not close after the 24th of November,” CJI Gavai warned, underscoring that delays will not be tolerated.
The petitioners’ counsel highlighted that no proceedings had been conducted since the July 31 order.
“The MLAs are still continuing. Your lordships had held that if any MLA was trying to protract the proceedings, an adverse inference would be drawn. Two petitions are pending. The speaker has not touched them. Others are in the evidence stage,” the counsel said.
The contempt plea follows the apex court’s July 31 judgment in writ petitions filed by BRS leaders K.T. Rama Rao, Padi Kaushik Reddy, and K.O. Vivekanand.
The bench had made it clear that the speaker, acting under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, does not enjoy “constitutional immunity.”
“The very foundation of our democracy is shaken when elected representatives are allowed to defect and yet continue in office without timely adjudication. Parliament had trusted the high office of the Speaker to act expeditiously. That trust, in many cases, has not been honoured,” the bench said.