The Supreme Court on July 12 pressed the pause button in the legal battle for power in Karnataka by asking Legislative Assembly Speaker K.R. Ramesh Kumar to refrain from deciding on the disqualification or resignation of 10 rebel Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) MLAs for the time being.
The order comes just a day after the court asked Mr. Kumar to meet the 10 MLAs at 6 p.m. on July 11 and decide on their resignations “forthwith or in the course of the remaining part of the day”.
On July 11, a Bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi ordered status quo and scheduled the hearing for July 16. The Bench’s decision came after an hour-long hearing in which Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy said the rebel MLAs have dragged the court into a “political thicket”.
“What was the basis of the Supreme Court’s intervention? Your Lordships passed an ex parte order against me yesterday… But what do these MLAs want? They claim the government has failed, so you[Supreme Court] help us fail it further. They claim there is ‘mala fide’. But these are just words. They claim the State administration has come to a standstill and there are scams. Do you know that one of them is involved in a scam named in their own petition?” senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, for the Chief Minister, submitted.
The Speaker, in turn, accused the legislators of feeding the court a petition “full of blunders and distortions”.