- Court
- Supreme Court of India
- Decided
- 13 May 2011
- Bench
- Altamas Kabir, Cyriac Joseph
- Case no.
- Civil Appeal Nos. 4510-4514 of 2011
- Result
- Appeals allowed.
Headnote
Legislature - Independent legislators extending support to Chief Minister in the formation of the Bharatiya Jana ta Party led Government and also joining his Council of Ministers - Status ofsuch independent legislators - Held: It cannot be said that such independent legislators had sacrificed their independent identity.
The question which arose for consideration in these appeals is whether by extending support to 'Y'-Chief Minister in the formation of the B~aratiya Janata Party led Government, the appellants"independent legislators had sacrificed their independent identity.
Allowing the appeals, the Court HELD: The submission that by extending support to 'Y' in the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party led Government the appellants had sacrificed their independent identity cannot be accepted. The fact that the said appellants also joined the Council of Ministers does not also point to such an eventuality. An independent legislator does not always have to express his intention to join a party in writing, but the mere extension of support to 'Y' and the decision to join his Cabinet, was not sufficient to indicate that the appellants had decided to join and/or had actually joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, particularly on account of the subsequent conduct in which they were treated differently from the Members of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Therefore, the decision of the Speaker as upheld by the High Court is not sustainable. The orders passed by the Speaker and by the Full Bench of the High Court are set aside. The detailed judgment would follow. [Paras 2, 3 and 5] [328-G-H; 329-A-D] .
Headnote as published in the Digital Supreme Court Reports by the Supreme Court of India. Paragraph references point to the judgment below.
Judgment
ALTAMAS KABIR, J. 1. Leave granted.
¶2We are unable to accept the submission made on behalf of the respondents that by extending support to Shri Yeddyurappa in the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party led Government the appellants had sacrificed their independent · identity. The fact that the said appellants also joined the Council of Ministers does not also point to such an eventuality. It is no doubt true that an independent legislator does not always have to express his intention to join a party in writing, but the mere extension of support to Shri Yeddyurappa and the decision to join his Cabinet, in our view, was not sufficient to indicate that the appellants had decided to join and/or had actually joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, particularly on account of the subsequent conduct in which they were treated differently from the Members of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
¶3We are, therefore, unable to sustain the decision of the Speaker as affirmed by the High Court. and we, accordingly, allow the appeals and set aside the orders passed by the Speaker on 11.10.2010 and by the Full Bench of the High Court on 14.2.2011.
¶4There will, however, be no order as to costs.
¶5Detailed judgment will follow.
Case details
Arising from
CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION : Civil Appeal Nos. 4510-4514 of 2011.
From the Judgment & Order dated 14.2.2011 of the High Court of Karnataka at Bangalorein Writ Petition No. 32674-32678 of 2010 (GM-RES).
WITH
C.A. No. 4517-4521 of2011.
P.P. Rao, K.K. Venugopal, Satpal Jain, P.S. Narsimha, Dinesh Dwivedi, Jaideep Gupta, Soli J. Sorabji, Prashant Kumar Mahalakshmi Pavani, Bimola Devi, Triveni Potekar, Ustav Sidhu, Apeksha Sharan, Filza Moonis, Amarjit Singh, Bedi, Prashant Kumar, Pooja Dhar, Gopal, Chandra Bhushan Prasad, Bhupender Yadav, Ruchi Kohli, Saurabh Shamsherty, Anish Kumar Gupta, M.B. Nargan, Deep Shikha Bharati, P.V.
Appearances
Yogeshwaran, Vikramjeet Banerjee, M.B. Nargund, Prasanna Deshmukh, Rajeev Kr. Singh, Vikramjeet, Pritish Kapoor, Jyotika Kalra for the appearing parties.
Source: Supreme Court of India, Digital Supreme Court Reports, via the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open dataset (CC BY 4.0). Text was extracted from the official PDF and may contain conversion errors. Check the official PDF before relying on it.