BANGALORE: The Karnataka High Court on Thursday said it would not be "just and proper" for it to pass any interim order as prayed for by Vatal Nagaraj, G.V. Srirama Reddy and S. Rajendran, legislators, seeking a direction to the Assembly Speaker to disqualify Janata Dal (Secular) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy and 35 other party MLAs, restrain them from participating in the Assembly proceedings or allowing them to hold ministerial berths.

The court said the prayer in the petition — seeking a temporary injunction against the 36 MLAs restraining them from holding the post of a minister or participating in the Assembly proceedings — was premature and misconceived and could not be granted. Rejecting the prayers, it said the court could not pass orders at this stage assuming or presuming what would be the orders of the Speaker (on the petitions filed before him by the three legislators seeking disqualification of the 36 JD (S) MLAs).

A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice, Cyriac Joseph and Justice R. Gururajan passed the order on a petition by Mr. Nagaraj and two others seeking a direction to the Speaker to disqualify Mr. Kumaraswamy and 35 MLAs owing allegiance to him and to ensure that they did not hold any post of minister or participate in the Assembly proceedings.

The petition had come up on Wednesday before a single judge who had posted the case before a Division Bench while ordering issue of notices to the 36 MLAs. When the proceedings commenced in the afternoon in court hall no. 1 which was packed to capacity, senior counsel Ravi Verma Kumar, appearing for the petitioners, sought the disqualification of 36 MLAs under the provisions of Article 191 (2) read with 10th Schedule of the Constitution.

He said when the coalition Government under N. Dharam Singh was formed the intention of both the Congress and JD (S) was to keep out the BJP. However, on January 18, 2005, Mr. Kumaraswamy and other MLAs approached the Governor giving their letter of withdrawal of support to the coalition government. Later, they joined hands with the BJP and gave another letter to the Governor staking their claim to form a Government under the chief ministership of Mr. Kumaraswamy.

On the petitioners' allegation that the MLAs had voluntarily given up the membership of JD (S) and thus had suffered disqualification under Article 191 (2) of the Constitution, the Bench said the issue was referred to the Speaker and his decision would be final. "Till today, the Speaker had not taken a decision." Nor had he made any declaration disqualifying them. Therefore, the prayer by the petitioners was premature and could not be granted. On restraining the MLAs from occupying ministerial posts, it said such a provision would operate only if a member was disqualified. It said it was also not inclined to pass any direction asking the Speaker to dispose of the petitions by a time frame.

It said it did not have any reason to assume that the Speaker would not pay attention to the relevant aspects and take appropriate decision. "In our view, even without a direction from the court, the Speaker is expected to take appropriate action on the two petitions as early as possible."

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