The split verdict on a batch of petitions challenging the disqualification of 18 rebel AIADMK MLAs is a breather for the ruling party headed by chief minister Edapaddi Palaniswami. While the chief justice of the Madras high court, Indira Banerjee, upheld Speaker Dhanapal’s decision to disqualify dissidents, her colleague Justice Sundar took the diametrically opposite view in deep condemnation of the process by which the disqualification was done selectively. The immediate legal implication of the split verdict is status quo in the confused affairs of the Tamil Nadu legislature of 234 members in which the ruling party has the support of around 116 members and the Opposition DMK and Congress 97 plus one MLA of IUML, besides the leader of the 18 dissidents T.T.V. Dhinakaran who is the lone Independent MLA. The farther away a trust vote is, the better it may be for the ruling party founded by MGR and nurtured by Jayalalithaa.
The incongruities thrown up by even one-half of the judgment are aplenty. While the chief justice has been consistent in her view in two rulings on disqualified Tamil Nadu MLAs that the Speaker reigns supreme in the House provided his actions are not mala fide, her stand was different in Puducherry. The Lt Governor had nominated three MLAs to the House who the Speaker had refused to acknowledge, but the high court bench led by the chief justice had set aside his objections. The inequities engendered by various rulings by the Speaker and the court in the matter are obvious. Eleven MLAs of the ruling party who had voted against the government in a trust vote on the floor continue to be members of the legislature while two of them, including the deputy chief minister, are in the Cabinet. The intense political drama now awaits the verdict of the third judge to be nominated by the seniormost member of the Madras high court as the CJ has ruled in the matter.
