Aastha Thakur
Published on: 29 September 2022 at 17:10 IST
The Supreme Court of India held that the Speaker of Legislative Assembly under the Xth Schedule of the Constitution, holds no power to refute pension and other benefits available to a former MLA while deciding a disqualification plea filed against him.
The court was hearing appeals filed by then four JD(U) MLAs, who were disqualified by the 15the Legislative Assembly Speaker from their post as well as denied the superannuation benefit on November 11, 2014.
The bench comprising of Chief Justice of India UU Lalit, Justices Ravindra Bhat and JB Pardiwala were sitting judges in the present matter and the Bench observed that –
“In our considered view, the Speaker was not within his jurisdiction to issue such directions (other than the direction of disqualification). We therefore, set aside the directions issued by the Speaker in Paragraph 28 of the order. We have not gone into the question of disqualification; all questions are left open.”
The Court noted that it need not address the fundamental question of whether the order of disqualification issued by the Assembly speaker was correct or not because the 15th Legislative Assembly is no longer in operation and the 17th Legislative Assembly is now taking place.
The Bench stated that the only issue at hand was to evaluate the impact of the Speaker’s directives in his disqualification decision, which included withholding pension and other benefits.
The Senior Advocate Devdutt Kamat were representing the appellants submitted that the directives given by Speaker on November 1, 2014 were beyond the extent of his powers.
The counsel cited the decisions of apex court in Shrimanth Balasaheb Patil vs. Hon’ble Speaker Karnataka Legislative Assembly, and underlined the operative part which is as follows:
“In exercise of his powers under the X schedule, the Speaker does not have the power either to indicate the period for which the person would stand disqualified or to bar someone from contesting in elections.”
On this, the Court questioned the opposing counsel, the statute from which the Speaker derives the authority that a pension can be withheld.
The counsel stated that they were disqualified and all the subsequent consequences came with it. The Court then orally denied to take the issue of disqualification stating that:
“We need not go into the issue of disqualification on the ground that whatever is there, whatever happened in Rome, happened there. Once you come out, it’s not there….It’s not a permanent disqualification or a debarment or something. All he is saying is pension need not be stopped”,