The Supreme Court’s decision overruling the Maharashtra Assembly’s suspension last year of 12 BJP MLAs was a “tight slap on the face” of the ruling tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, former Chief Minister and BJP Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis said on Friday.
Mr. Fadnavis stated that the Uddhav Thackeray-led government (of the Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress) often acted as though they were above the Constitution. He accused the MVA of ‘conspiring’ to suspend the MLAs as they had been fighting for the rights of the OBC community.
“I would like to thank the Supreme Court for its decision. It has rightly pointed out that the government had acted ‘illegally’ and ‘irrationally’. The government feels they are above the Constitution and hence they had suspended the 12 MLAs on a false narrative based on events in the presiding officer’s [Shiv Sena leader Bhaskar Jadhav] chamber that never occurred,” he in Goa.
‘A gross injustice’
Mr. Fadnavis, who is also the BJP’s Goa election in charge, further demanded an apology from the MVA government as its undemocratic action had been “a gross injustice” to the people who had elected the 12 MLAs.
The legislators were suspended on July 5 last from the Assembly after the government accused them of allegedly misbehaving with Mr. Jadhav. However, based on pleas field by these MLAs, the Supreme Court today had held that a resolution suspending them beyond the period of the remainder of the session held in July 2021 was “unconstitutional” and “irrational”.
Mr. Fadnavis noted that the top court, in its verdict, had unequivocally said that wherever the State Legislature did not respect the Constitution, the court would have to intervene. “The Supreme Court had even given a chance to the government to correct itself and had directed the legislature to revoke the suspensions of the MLAs after they had presented themselves in the Assembly…But this government is so arrogant that it refused to take back its decision. Accordingly, the apex court had to step into the affairs of the legislature and the court has now quashed the resolution. We demand an apology from the government for its unconstitutional conduct,” he said.
Mr. Fadnavis alleged that the order suspending the BJP MLAs could not have been issued without the tacit consent of Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.
