No fundamental right to be MLA: Supreme Court on plea by disqualified Himachal Pradesh Congress MLAs

The Supreme Court on Tuesday remarked that the right to be elected as a Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) is not a fundamental right and one cannot move the Supreme Court directly alleging violation of such a right [Chaitanya Sharma and ors vs Speaker Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly and ors]..A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Dipankar Datta and Prashant Kumar Mishra made the oral observation while hearing a plea by six Congress legislators from Himachal Pradesh who were disqualified by the speaker of the assembly for voting in favour of BJP candidate during the recent Rajya Sabha elections. A petition can be filed directly before the Supreme Court under Article 32 of the Constitution only when there is a violation of any of the fundamental rights enumerated in Part III of the Constitution.Justice Khanna asked at the outset why the petitioners had not moved the High Court first and what fundamental rights' violation was involved in the matter."They were elected as per the provisions of the Constitution," the petitioner's counsel argued."That is not a fundamental right," Justice Khanna said. The counsel for the legislators stressed that they had been disqualified overnight, to which the bench responded that the same is disputed.The matter was eventually adjourned to be heard on March 18. .The MLAs - Chaitanya Sharma, Davinder Kumar (Bhutto), Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Rajinder Rana, Ravi Thakur and Sudhir Sharma - moved the joint petition against their removal from the legislative assembly by the Speaker.The six MLAs were disqualified by the Speaker on February 29 on a petition moved by the State Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Harshwardhan Chauhan.This was soon after their cross voting led to defeat of the Congress candidate (and Senior Advocate) Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi.Speaker Kuldeep Pathania disqualified the MLAs for having remained absent from the House despite the issuance of a whip by the party. The speaker had opined that in voting on critical matters like budget, elected MLAs of a party cannot be permitted to hide behind procedural technicalities such as proof of service of the whip.Thus, the speaker had ruled that the six MLAs incurred disqualification under the Tenth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.They then approached the apex court against the same..Senior Advocate Satya Pal Jain appeared for the MLAs before the top court.