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Supreme Court judgment on Speaker’s role
January 26 , 2020
1757 days
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- Justice Nariman wrote this judgment along with Justices Aniruddha Bose and V. Ramasubramanian.
- This judgment came on an appeal filed by the Congress legislator Keisham Meghchandra Singh against the Manipur Assembly Speaker for the disqualification of Minister T. Shyamkumar.
- Shyamkumar, who after contesting in the Congress ticket, switched sides to favour the BJP Government led by N Biren Singh.
- The court asked the State Assembly Speaker to decide the disqualification petition in four weeks.
Recommendations
- The Supreme Court has made some decisions on the position of Speaker as the adjudicating authority under the Anti-Defection Law (ADL).
- The Supreme Court asked the Parliament to amend the Constitution to strip Legislative Assembly Speakers of their exclusive power to decide whether legislators should be disqualified or not under the anti-defection law.
- Disqualification petitions under the Tenth Schedule should be adjudicated by a mechanism outside Parliament or the Legislative Assemblies.
- An independent tribunal ought to be appointed instead to determine the fate of an MP or an MLA who has switched sides for money and power, it said.
- The court suggested a permanent tribunal headed by a retired Supreme Court judge or a former High Court Chief Justice.
- It questioned why a Speaker, who is a member of a particular political party and an insider in the House, should be the “sole and final arbiter” in the disqualification of a political defector.
- The court said the Speakers should decide Tenth Schedule disqualifications within a “reasonable period”.
- The Supreme Court set three months as the outer limit for the Speaker to conclude disqualification proceedings against defectors.
Backdrop
- In a landmark judgment in Kihoto Hollohan (1992) the Supreme Court upheld the validity of the ADL.
- This verdict had also made the Speaker’s order subject to judicial review on limited grounds.
- In that, the SC also made it clear that the court’s jurisdiction would not come into play unless the Speaker passes an order.
- It left no room for intervention prior to adjudication.
- In 2016, there was another case named as S.A. Sampath Kumar vs. Kale Yadaiah case.
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