The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an impleadment plea by five Karnataka rebel MLAs Assembly Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar’s decision to not accept their resignations.
Mukul Rohatgi, the counsel of the lawmakers had mentioned before a bench, headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, that they want to be impleaded as a party in the ongoing hearings.
The five rebels are Anand Singh, Munirathna, Roshan Baig, MTB Nagaraj and K Sudhakar.
Earlier on Wednesday, 10 rebel MLAs — seven from the Congress and three from the JD(S) — moved the Supreme Court alleging that they were being threatened and that the Assembly Speaker KR Ramesh was sitting on their resignation letters in violation of the Constitution.
Despite the court’s order to spell out his decision on the resignations of the 16 MLAs by Thursday night, the Speaker chose to reserve his decision and showed no interest in taking an urgent call on the matter.
Therefore, the court has ordered status quo on the resignations by the rebel Karnataka lawmakers till the matter will be heard by the court on Tuesday and also barred the Speaker from taking any decision on either resignation of the lawmakers or their disqualification till then.
The 13-month-old Karnataka coalition government is trying to save its face desperately after a total of 18 MLAs resigned from the ruling alliance – 13 from Congress and three from JD (S) and two more, including one Independent last Monday.
If the resignations are accepted, the ruling coalition will slip below the half-way mark and rival BJP will have a majority.