"Dangerous, unconstitutional:" Supreme Court on decision by Maharashtra Assembly to suspend 12 BJP MLAs for a year

The resolution passed by the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly suspending 12 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs, is prima facie unconstitutional since such a suspension cannot operate beyond six months owing to a constitutional bar, the Supreme Court observed on Tuesday [Ashish Shelar vs Maharashtra Legislative Assembly]..A Bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and CT Ravikumar also took exception to the argument by the Maharashtra Assembly that the house has absolute powers to frame its own rules including on period of suspension of its members.When Senior Advocate Aryama Sundaram appearing for the Maharashtra Assembly argued that the House makes its own rules and can choose to depart from it, Justice Maheshwari disagreed."Saying you can do what you want means what? How long can seat remain vacant is 60 days.. at the most 6 months outer limit can be there. Here we are talking about a constituency being represented in a parliamentary form of democracy? Is this not hitting the basic structure of the constitution when the 12 constituencies are unrepresented?" said Justice Maheshwari."Now it is 12. Tomorrow it will be 120. It is a dangerous argument. Absolute power does not mean unbridled. This is a serious issue," Justice Khanwilkar weighed in.The Supreme Court stated that the explicit outer limit as per the Constitution for an MLA to be absent from his seat is 60 days, after which the seat is deemed to be vacated.It observed that even if the Assembly rules are read in consonance with the Constitution, the maximum bar could be for six months only.The Bench was hearing a plea by BJP lawmakers, led by Ashish Shelar, challenging the resolution suspending them for a year.The 12 BJP legislators were suspended from the Assembly in July 2021 for one year after the State government accused them of "misbehaving" with Presiding Officer Bhaskar Jadhav in the Speaker's chamber, on the first day of the monsoon session.The suspended MLAs are Dr Sanjay Kute, Ashish Shelar, Abhimanyu Pawar, Girish Mahajan, Atul Bhatkhalkar, Harish Pimple, Jaikumar Rawal, Yogesh Sagar, Narayan Kuche, Bunty Bhangdiya, Parag Alvani and Ram Satpute.The Court said that the decision of suspension is even worse than expelling them, since no one can then represent the constituents of the suspended representatives in the Assembly."We will say that the decision is unconstitutional. House has authority to suspend you but not beyond 59 days. House is also governed by constitution and fundamental rights. This is not punishing the member but punishing the constituency as a whole. in the facts of the present matter, we will say enough is enough in two pages," the Bench cautioned..The top court stated that "we can say that the decision to suspension can only operate till 6 months and later than that it will be hit by constitutional bar.".Senior Advocate Mahesh Jethmalani appearing for one of the suspended legislators argued that the top court "has to safeguard the sanctity of these proceedings." "Streams of justice has to be ensured and this cannot happen unfairly. otherwise every majority of members will rub against the minority. Else why have rule book in parliament?" Jethmalani submitted. .The matter will be heard next on January 18, 2022. .[Read live account of proceedings]