SC tells Karnataka Speaker to decide on resignation by 6 pm today

New Delhi, July 11: The Supreme Court has put the Karnataka Speaker on notice and asked him to decide on the resignations of the ten rebel MLAs by today. The court has asked the MLAs to meet the Speaker by 6 PM, while also ordering the Director General of Karnataka to provide adequate security to the legislators.

While asking the Speaker to decide by today, the court also said that it would take a call on the matter by tomorrow.

The ten MLAs moved the Supreme Court and in their petition they accused the speaker of abandoning his constitutional duty and say that he is deliberately delaying the acceptance of their resignations.

In their application they said that the Speaker has become incommunicado and due process of law relating to acceptance of resignation is being halted.

They also say that the process for acceptance of their resignations is being halted with a malafide political intent save the minority Congress-JD(S) government.

Further they also said that the Kumaraswamy government has been reduced to a minority. He is refusing to seek a vote of confidence and continues in power illegally. We resigned because we were fed up with corruption and scams. The BJP was the single largest party in the 2018 assembly elections, the ten rebel MLAs also said in their petition.

Further they said that since Kumaraswamy took oath, the administration came to a standstill and maladministration is writ large. In recent days the government has been rocked by various scandals.

The MLAs cited the IMA Ponzi scam, in which thousands have been cheated of their hard earned money and yet the main accused has been allowed to leave the country. The allegations are that senior functionaries of the government have been invoked in the said scam, they said.

They also cited the JSW land scam and said land had been given at throw away rates to industrialists against public interest. Further the coalition has been rocked by inner-contradictions and the government has never remained stable. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, the governing coalition contesting the elections together on a seat sharing formula, list miserably, they also said.

On Monday, the Speaker of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, Ramesh Kumar said that he would be able to process only five of the resignation letters sent in by the rebel MLAs as only they were in the prescribed format.

The Speaker said that the 8 other resignations were not in the prescribed format. This would mean that the 8 resignations would have to be submitted afresh, the Speaker indicated. He further said that the resignations sent in by Ramalinga Reddy, Gopalaiah, Anand Singh, Pratap Gowda and Narayan Gowda were in the prescribed format.

The Speaker has scheduled appointments with the five MLAs on July 12 and 15 to speak with them about their resignations. While the others would have to send in their resignations afresh as per the norms, the Speaker said that he was yet to receive the resignation letter from Roshan Baig, the 14th MLA.