Supreme Court permits Karnataka rebel MLAs to meet Speaker at 6 pm to submit resignations

The Supreme Court has permitted the rebel MLAs of Karnataka to meet Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar at 6 pm today and submit their resignations is they wish to. The top court also ordered the state police to provide security to the rebel lawmakers. The apex court has asked the Speaker to decide on the resignations during ‘course of the day.’ The order was passed by a Bench of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose.

This means the JDS-Congress government has few hours to devise a new strategy. News Nation has earlier reported about how the top leadership was closely watching the Supreme Court’s order. The 10 rebel MLAs of Congress and JD(S) in their collective please had alleged that the Karnataka Assembly Speaker was not accepting their resignations deliberately. The 10 rebel MLAs who have filed the application in the top court are -- Pratap Gouda Patil, Ramesh Jarkiholi, Byrati Basavaraj, B C Patil, S T Somashekhar, Arbail Shivaram Hebbar, Mahesh Kumathalli, K Gopalaiah, A H Vishwanath and Narayana Gowda.

Appearing for the rebel MLAs, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi said that the 15 MLAs wanted to resign, but there was no formal acceptance by the Assembly Speaker. In his please, Rohatgi submitted, “The idea is not to defect, but resign so that we can go back to public and contest (elections).”

On Wednesday, in yet another setback to Congress-JDS coalition government in Karntaka, two more MLAs of the Congress - MTB Nagraj and Dr Sudhakar - submitted their resignations to Assembly Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar. With this, the total number of MLAs who resigned from their post has gone up to 16, including independent lawmaker R Roshan Baig. Dr Sudhakar, the lawmaker from Chikkaballapur, was said to be angry with the Kumaraswamy government after he had been removed from the post of Pollution Control Board Chairman ealier this year. He had then threatened to "stand for himself" if the high command refused to listen to him. The 44-year old MBBS graduate, who also had a small corporate stint before joining the politics, had often showed rebelion signs by giving given blunt comments. The Karnataka Speaker has not accepted the resignation of any of the MLAs.