Bangalore: Karnataka High Court on Wednesday directed the Assembly not to arrest till further orders two Kannada tabloid editors facing defamation cases.

Speaker K.B. Koliwad had rejected the pleas of Ravi Belagere, the editor of the mass circulated Hi Bangalore weekly, and Anil Raju, who runs the little-known Yelahanka Voice periodical, to reconsider the one-year jail term handed to them by the Assembly, prompting them to move court.

"The court directed the Assembly not to execute its resolution to arrest the editors till further orders," senior advocate Shankarappa, who represented Belagere and Raju, told The Telegraph.

The Assembly had pronounced the punishment for articles it deemed defamatory of certain BJP and Congress leaders.

Hi Bangalore had in 2014 carried articles deemed to have defamed Koliwad, who was an ordinary MLA then, and fellow Congress member B.M. Nagaraju. Yelahanka Voice got into trouble over an article last year that mentioned BJP member S.R. Vishwanath.

During a brief hearing on Wednesday that lasted about 10 minutes, Shankarappa told Justice A.S. Bopanna that the Assembly had overstepped its own powers.

Under the Constitution, an Assembly can take up breach of privilege proceedings but very rarely has a House taken that route.

While rejecting their plea, Speaker Koliwad had said there was no scope for further reconsideration, but that Belagere and Raju were free to challenge the order in court. "I alone do not have the power to decide on the plea as it was the House's decision," he had said.

The House privileges committee had in June found Belagere and Raju guilty of breach of privilege and sentenced them to a year each in jail and slapped fines of Rs 10,000 each. The Assembly passed a unanimous resolution upholding the recommendation.