SC judge recuses himself from hearing the case of 17 disqualified Karnataka MLAs

Supreme Court judge, Justice Mohan Shantanagoudar, one of the judges on the bench hearing the case of 17 disqualified MLAs of Karnataka, on Tuesday recused himself from the matter. The next hearing in this matter is scheduled for Monday (September 23). The 17 MLAs were disqualified by then Karnataka Assembly Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar for defying their party whips to attend the House on July 23.

In their plea, the disqualified MLAs had said that the action of the Speaker was "arbitrary" and "unreasonable". Claiming the decision an abuse of his powers under the 10th Schedule of the Constitution, the MLAs had said that the Speaker's move was against the MLAs' fundamental right to carry on any trade, business and profession guaranteed under the Articles 19 and 21.

It may be recalled that 13 Congress MLAs and three JDS legislators had resigned and two Independent MLAs, who were backing the then Congress-JDS government in the state, had decided to support the BJP, which eventually led to the downfall of the coalition government in the state.  After days of political drama, then Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy failed to win the trust vote, paving way for the formation of the BJP government led by BS Yeddiyurappa on July 26.

The 11 Congress lawmakers disqualified are Pratap Gouda Patil (Maski), BC Patil (Hirekerur), Shivaram Hebbar (Yellapur), ST Someshekhar (Yeshwantapur), Byrati Basavraj (K.R. Puram), Anand Singh (Vijayanagar), R Roshan Baig (Shivajinagar), Muniratna (R.R. Nagar), K Sudhakar (Chikkaballapur), MTB Nagaraj (Hoskote) and Shrimant Patil (Kagawad). The three JD-S legislators are A.H. Vishwanath (Hunsur), Narayan Gowda (K.R. Pete) and K. Gopalaiah (Mahalakshmi Layout).