Court to first hear writ plea by TRS legislators

Hyderabad: The High Court at Hyderabad has made it clear that it will first hear and decide on the maintainability of the writ appeal filed by Prashant Reddy and 11 other TRS MLAs against the order of the single judge restoring the membership of the two expelled Congress MLAs, Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and S A Sampath Kumar.

It also directed the counsel appearing for the 12 TRS MLAs to explain as to what protection was available to opposition legislators against their arbitrary expulsion by the ruling party, especially in light of absence of any Constitutional and statutory rules in this regard.

The Division Bench comprising of Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice K Vijayalakshmi gave these directions on Thursday while hearing the writ plea filed by TRS MLAs.

Senior Supreme Court lawyer C S Vaidyanath, appearing for the appellants, contended that the single judge’s order was mainly based on violation of principles of natural justice in the case of two expelled members, which was wrong because the incident happened in full view of the House and there was no need to order for an inquiry. If the incident had happened outside the House, then may be an inquiry would have been necessary.

He also contended that the expelled members, in their affidavit, admitted to having thrown the earphones by stating that the earphones did not hit the Chairman. The throwing of earphones itself was an unbecoming behaviour by the members and deserving of summary expulsion, and the single judge was wrong in not taking this aspect into account, he felt. The Bench adjourned the hearing to Friday.

Professional misconduct
The bench found fault with the counsel for the two Congress MLAs, Ravishankar Jandhyala, for continuing to represent Sampath Kumar when he had engaged a new counsel for himself.

It questioned as to how Jandhyala represented before the single judge on behalf of both Komatireddy and Sampath Kumar when Sampath Kumar’s new counsel filed vakalath on March 27, itself. It commented that this amounts to professional misconduct.