Supreme Court: The Court has allowed Rajasthan Assembly Speaker CP Joshi to withdraw his plea against Rajasthan High Court’s order asking him to defer disqualification proceedings till July 24, 2020.
Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for CP Joshi, told the Court that the High Court has passed a detailed order and the ad interim order passed has merged into the final interim order that has been passed by the High Court. Thus, he want to withdraw this petition with liberty to avail appropriate remedy as against the subsequent order. The Court, hence, dismissed the special leave petition as withdrawn, with the aforesaid liberty.
The Court had, on July 23, 2020, decided to hear the appeal of Rajasthan Assembly speaker CP Joshi against the stay order of Rajasthan High Court that asked the Speaker to not take action against Sachin Pilot and 18 other MLAs till July 24, at length and has said that the Order passed by Rajasthan High Court will be subject to the outcome of the said hearing.
“The case requires prolonged hearing so as to decide the question of jurisdiction. “
The Court had observed that Rajasthan Speaker’s petition against Rajasthan High Court’s order asking him to defer disqualification process till July 24 requires detailed hearing. It, however, refused to restrain the High Court from passing order on pleas of dissident 19 Cong MLAs challenging Speaker’s disqualification notice. The Court made clear that the Order passed by Rajasthan High Court will be subject to outcome of Speakers’ petition pending in the Supreme Court.
“As the High Court has already heard the matter after prolonged arguments and reserved the order, we are not staying the passing of the order, however, whatever order is passed, shall be ultimately subject to the outcome of this petition.”
When the matter was taken up today for hearing, Joshi requested withdrawal of his plea which the Court allowed.
CP Joshi had filed the petition in Supreme Court to avoid contradiction between decisions of Speaker and court. He approached the Supreme Court against the interim order passed by the Rajasthan High Court on the petition filed by Sachin Pilot and 18 MLAs from his camp against the disqualification notices issued against them. Joshi, in his SLP, said that the impugned interim order has interdicted and restrained the Speaker from calling of replies and conducting hearing of the disqualification proceedings pending against the respondents till July 24.
Pilot had also filed a caveat in the Supreme Court to ensure that no orders are passed on Joshi’s petition against High Court interim orders without hearing him and his supporting MLAs. A caveat is a notice seeking that certain actions may not be taken without informing the person who gave the notice.
[Speaker, Rajasthan Legislative Assembly v. Prithviraj Meena, 2020 SCC OnLine SC 599 , order dated 27.07.2020]
Also read:
Rajasthan Political Crisis | HC reserves order on petition by Sachin Pilot along with 18 other Congress MLAs, challenging disqualification notice issued by Assembly Speaker; To be pronounced on 24th July, 2020
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