The Karnataka Speaker on Tuesday rejected the resignations of eight of the 13 Congress-Janata Dal Secular MLAs who want to quit the House as they had not filed their appeals in the prescribed format.
Attending office for the first time after the MLAs submitted their resignations on Saturday, Speaker Ramesh Kumar, a Congress leader, examined each of the applications and cleared five for scrutiny. The Speaker has asked these five MLAs to meet him for an inspection of whether the resignation pleas are voluntary and in keeping with norms.
Kumar rejected the letters of eight MLAs on the ground that they were not in the format prescribed in Rule 202 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly.
“As members of the Assembly don’t they know the format in which they should submit resignations?” asked the Speaker. “So things arise in my mind. One is, they are ignorant. I pity them. The second is, they have done it deliberately just to pretend,” added Kumar, known as a stickler for rules.
The Speaker’s office has informed the eight MLAs to submit their resignations afresh.
Two Independent MLAs who had backed the ruling alliance resigned on Monday, theoretically reducing it to a minority and prompting all the ministers to offer to quit to accommodate disgruntled leaders and save the government.
Speaker Kumar said he had summoned the five MLAs whose resignation appeals have been accepted for scrutiny. “Resignations are submitted to the Speaker, who has to examine if they have been done voluntarily. So I have asked the five MLAs to come and meet me in my office,” he said.
Anand Singh and Pratapgouda Patil of the Congress and Narayana Gowda of the JDS have been asked to meet Kumar on Friday, when the monsoon session of the Assembly begins.
Since Saturday and Sunday are holidays for the legislature, the Congress’s Ramalinga Reddy and the JDS’s K. Gopaliah have been asked to meet the Speaker on Monday. If it is established that they quit voluntarily, the resignations will be accepted.
The two Independents — H. Nagesh and R. Shankar, who had been inducted as ministers — on Monday submitted their resignation from the council of ministers to chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy and governor Vajubhai Vala, respectively.
The Raj Bhavan forwarded Shankar’s letter to the Speaker. Kumar said he had written back to the governor that the council of ministers was not under his purview and only the chief minister could handle this situation.
Senior Congress leader Roshan Baig submitted his resignation to the Speaker at his chamber on Tuesday, becoming the 16th MLA to offer to quit his House membership. The plea is yet to be accepted.
The party recently suspended Baig for insulting senior leaders and urging Muslims to vote for the BJP-led NDA in the Lok Sabha elections. He had on Monday said he would be joining the BJP.
The Congress on Tuesday approached the Speaker seeking the disqualification of the party MLAs who have resigned. If they are disqualified, they will have to seek re-election.
The Congress Legislature Party met in the morning to take stock of the situation. While Anand Singh and Ramesh Jarkiholi of the Congress resigned on June 1, what followed was an exodus that threatened the stability of the government.
With the exit of Baig, the number of resignations has risen to 11 from the Congress alone. Three JDS lawmakers had resigned on Saturday. If all 16 are accepted, the BJP will have a lead of three in the Assembly.
Some of the MLAs, who are in Mumbai, told journalists they had quit their Assembly membership, not the party.
Briefing reporters after the legislature party meeting, Congress leader P.C. Siddaramaiah accused the BJP of using money and power to poach coalition lawmakers.
“Both (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi and (BJP chief) Amit Shah are involved in this. The Karnataka BJP is acting on their direct orders,” he said.
“This government has been facing such problems ever since it was formed after the BJP failed to prove its majority on the floor of the House,” said Siddaramaiah, a former chief minister. “This is the sixth time they are trying to destabilise our coalition government. This is an attack on democracy,” he added.
While the BJP has all along described the Congress-JDS tie-up as an unholy alliance and the government as one that does not have the mandate, Siddaramaiah did some number crunching to show that the administration had the people’s backing.
“We got 38 per cent vote share in last year’s Assembly elections, while the BJP got only 37 per cent. The JDS got 19 per cent. That gives this government a 57 per cent mandate,” he said.
