Arguments favour Speaker Dhanapal in 18 MLAs case

Supreme Court lawyer and senior counsel Arima Sundaram, appearing on behalf of the Speaker, contended that affidavits filed by the disqualified MLAs against the chief whip and the Speaker were utterly self-defeating as it clearly states that, “We have been disqualified to enable the party prove majority in the House and thereby retain the Chief Minister.” 

This submission, the senior counsel said, clearly reveals that the 18 MLAs had decided to vote against the government in the event of a floor test. They also in their representation to the Governor had clearly mentioned that the government headed by Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami is in a constitutional crisis. Under such circumstances, the action of the Speaker in disqualifying the MLAs cannot be termed as perverse as he had rightly disqualified them for differing with the party’s ideologies as the Chief Minister was elected by the majority MLAs. He further argued that the 18 disqualified MLAs on being disgruntled with the Chief Minister for his alleged corrupt ways had merely two options ahead of them. 

Either they should have left the party to fight for their cause or stayed and convinced the other MLAs to back them. Instead, they chose to meet the Governor to bring about a change with a covert intention of forcing a floor test to vote against the government. 

Finding fault with Justice M Sundar’s finding in his order that the MLAs had indeed knocked on the wrong door and hence he was not accounting that material, the senior counsel said that is the material which needs to be accounted for as that remains the buttressing material to establish that the MLAs were somehow looking for a way to topple the government. The arguments in the case will continue until Friday.