Shimla : The HP High Court has held that no time frame can be fixed by the Constitutional Court for the Speaker to decide the issue of resignations tendered by members of a Legislative Assembly/Vidhan Sabha, if any, brought before him.
While answering the reference regarding the difference of opinion between two judges on a petition filed by three Independent MLAs alleging therein that the Speaker was not accepting their resignations from the Legislative Assembly, Justice Sandeep Sharma observed that “this court is persuaded to agree with the view taken by the Chief Justice that no time frame can be fixed by the Constitutional Court for the Speaker to decide the issue of resignations tendered by members of the Legislative Assembly/Vidhan Sabha, if any, brought before him”.
Justice Sharma stated that “the Speaker acts as an officer of the state Legislature. In this capacity, the Speaker is coequal to the Constitutional Court as a constitutional authority. In such a situation, constitutional courts respect the domain of other constitutional authorities as regards the roles specifically assigned to them under the Constitution, a position that both Honourable Judges had already accepted while writing separate judgments”.
On May 8, 2024, a Division Bench of the HP High Court had given two judgments on a petition filed by three Independent MLAs alleging therein that the Speaker was not accepting their resignations from the Legislative Assembly and sought the intervention of the court in the matter.
Chief Justice MS Ramachandra Rao in his judgment had dismissed the petition by observing that “no direction can be issued to the Speaker to take a decision on the resignation letters of the three Independent MLAs within a fixed time frame.”
However, Justice Jyotsna Rewal Dua had directed the Speaker of the state Legislative Assembly to take a decision upon the resignation from the Vidhan Sabha tendered by the petitioners on March 22, 2024, within two weeks from the date on which the judgment was intimated to him.
In view of this difference of opinion, the matter was referred to the third judge, Justice Sandeep Sharma, for resolving the issue of whether a direction could be issued to the Speaker to take a decision on their resignations or not. While deciding the reference, Justice Sharma concurred with the view of the Chief Justice. However, subsequently, the Speaker accepted the resignations of the three independent MLAs on June 3.
