BHUBANESWAR:
Supreme Court hearing on four Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MLAs’ merger in
Biju Janata Dal (BJD) remained incomplete on Monday. The full hearing is
expected to be completed on Tuesday.
It may be noted that on June 5,
Badachana MLA Amar Prasad Satpathy, Saraskana MLA Ramachandra Hansda, Begunia
MLA Prashant Nanda and Gondia MLA Nabin Nanda joined the BJD following the
alleged failed coup attempt by BJD dissident MP Pyraimohan Mohapatra to
dethrone Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on May 29.
Terming the merger as violation
of the anti-defection law by the State Assembly, State NCP president Utkal Keshari Parida had on July 10
requested Odisha Assembly Speaker Pradeep Amat to disqualify the four legislators as members of the
House. But the Speaker had rejected his application. Unsatisfied Parida had
appealed before the Odisha High Court in this regard which asked the speaker to
take decision on the matter within eight weeks.
While Amat had filed a special
leave petition before the Supreme Court on the joining of four NCP MLAs with
rulling BJD. The apex court had accepted the petition and issued a notice on
December 3 last year to Parida regarding
the matter.
During Monday’s hearing in the
court, Amat’s advocate Pitambar Acharya argued that the complainant doesn’t
have the authority to file a petition on the MLAs’ joining case as he is not a
member of the State Assembly. The Tuesday’s hearing would decide the fate of
the MLAs.
No comments:
Post a Comment