Speaker Biman Banerjee is taking legal advice to explore options of challenging a Calcutta High Court verdict that disqualified Mukul Roy as a member of the Bengal Assembly.
Roy’s disqualification was the first instance of judicial intervention here to implement the Constitution (Fifty-second Amendment) Act, 1985, better known as the anti-defection law.
Sources on the Treasury benches said Banerjee had consulted seniors in the state’s legal panel, and one such meeting took place on Monday.
Asked if the decision to move court against the ruling of the high court division bench (comprising Justice Debangshu Basak and Justice Md. Shabbar Rashidi) had been taken yet, the Speaker said: “Not yet.”
“Legal advice is being taken, yes,” he added.
A senior Trinamool Congress lawmaker said the decision could be finalised on Tuesday, and that the matter was likely to be taken to the Supreme Court.
“The judgment raised questions on the Speaker’s chair, and his competence, fairness... he was accused of failing to protect the Constitution. It did not go down well, obviously,” he said.
Thursday’s ruling meant former Trinamool national general secretary Roy (who has gone back and forth between Trinamool and the BJP a few times since 2017 is no longer the Krishnanagar Uttar MLA. The bench had set aside the Speaker’s June 8, 2022, decision and penalised Roy.
On June 8, 2022, Speaker Banerjee declared that there was not enough evidence to prove that Roy had left the BJP. This, despite the elaborate joining ceremony — televised live — for him and his son Subhranshu Roy at the Trinamool headquarters, in the presence of chief minister Mamata Banerjee and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, on June 11, 2021.
Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari (himself a Trinamool turncoat) has threatened to use the verdict as a precedent to have other BJP defectors disqualified before the term of the current Assembly ends.
“That possibility, too, needs to be eliminated. Not because we fear by-polls — we will win handsomely. In fact, with only months remaining for the Assembly election, bypolls would not be necessary. But we do not want them to have this over us, going into the campaign,” said a Trinamool MLA, adding that the four remaining BJP MLAs who defected to Trinamool without subsequent resignations are unlikely to face the music, with such little time remaining.
Three other BJP MLAs who had defected had resigned eventually, while another one had returned to the BJP.
The BJP’s 77-member strength in the 294-seat 17th Assembly is down to 65 now — seven of them lost to defections and five lost in subsequent bypolls. The lone Left-backed Congress MLA, Bayron Biswas, is the only non-BJP defector in the Treasury benches, the strength of which is 225 currently (not factoring in Behala Paschim MLA Partho Chatterjee, suspended from Trinamool) in the 292-seat House (two vacancies because of death of Trinamool MLAs).