The High Court of Bombay at Goa Friday rejected the plea to disqualify former MGP MLAs Manohar ‘Babu’ Azgaonkar and Deepak Pauskar for merging their splinter group of the party into BJP.
The High Court observed that the Speaker of the Goa legislative assembly will decide on the related disqualification application within reasonable time.
Social activist and advocate Sadanand Vaigankar had filed the petition before the High Court challenging the order of the Speaker dated March 27 approving the merger of the MGP legislative party into BJP. Out of the three MLAs of MGP, two MLAs – Babu Azgaonkar and Deepak Pauskar had merged into BJP.
The petitioner had moved the High Court invoking extraordinary jurisdiction of the High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution seeking protection of the constitutional scheme, constitutional values and the spirit of democracy and the basic feature of the Constitution, which, according to him, was sought to be circumvented and defeated by illegal and malafide actions of the Speaker and the present ruling dispensation.
The then acting Speaker Michael Lobo had filed his say before the High Court in the case and stated that Speaker is a constitutional authority and beyond the jurisdiction of the High Court. Babu Azgaonkar and Deepak Pauskar had also filed their affidavits in which they had denied any illegality while merging into BJP.