Telangana High Court issues notices on Congress defections

Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court on Tuesday issued notice to the Speaker of the Assembly and Chairman of the Legislative Council for being presiding officers of the tribunal under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution in cases related to the merger of the Congress Legislature Party with the TRS.

A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Raghavender Si-ngh Chauhan and Just-ice Shameem Akhter issued notices to the Leg-islative Council secretary, the Council Chair-man in his position as presiding officer of the tribunal, the Election Commission and the four MLCs who were merged into the TRS in the Legislative Council. The Congress MLCs, Mr M.S. Prabhakar Rao, Mr K. Damodar Reddy, Mr T. Santosh Kumar and Ms Akula Lalitha, were merged with the TRS by way of issuing Bulletin No. 9. All of them were directed to file their replies to the petitioner within four weeks.

The bench was dealing with a petition filed by then Congress leader in the Council of Shabbir Ali who had challenged the merger. Counsel for Mr Shabbir Ali said the petition was filed on December 24, 2018, immediately after the merger bulletin was issued. Counsel said the case had been pending without issuing notices. He alleged that the earlier bench had simply adjourned the hearing several times.

Responding to counsel’s submissions, Jus-tice Chauhan inquired why the case had been pending. He went through the docket file of the writ petition and found that there were many adjournments since December 2018.

Additional Advocate-General J. Ramchander Rao sought an to July, stating that there was no urgency to hear the petition now. He aid Mr Harin Raval, senior counsel in the Supreme Court, who is appearing for the state, and the Legislative Council Chairman would return to India after  July 7.

Mr Shabbir Ali’s counsel contested this and said Mr Raval had appeared in the court premises 10

minutes before the petition came up for hearing. The bench then issued the notices.

The bench also issued notices to the Speaker and Assembly Secretary, the Election Commis-sion and 10 Congress MLAs while dealing another  petition filed by Congress Legislature Party leader Mallu Bha-tti Vikramarka and TPCC president N. Utta-m Kumar Reddy on April 29.

The petitioners sought a direction to the Spea-ker to inform them in advance in case he intended to merge the Congress with the TRS.

The 10 legislators are: Mr Devireddy Sudheer Reddy, Mr Chirumarthy Lingaiah, Ms Haripriya Banoth, Mr Kandala Upender Reddy, Ms P. Sabitha Indra Reddy, Mr Rega Kantha Rao, Mr Athram Sakku, Mr Beeram Harshavardhan Reddy, Mr Vanama Venkateswara Rao and Jalala Surender.

Since the petition was filed, no hearing has been taken place. On Tuesday, counsel for the petitioners informed the court that even though the Speaker was given a letter requesting him to inform the political status of the ten MLAs, if he intended to merge them with the TRS, the Speaker had ignored this aspect and gone ahead and completed the exercise.

Another petition filed by Mr Uttam Kumar Reddy, and Mr Mallu Bhatti on June 10, after the merger of the MLAs, was listed for hearing on Wednesday before a Bench headed by Justice Chauhan.