The Madras High Court has ordered that no floor test be conducted in the Tamil Nadu Assembly until September 20.
This comes after the TTV Dhinakaran camp had expressed their apprehensions that 19 MLAs would be disqualified by the Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker.
While passing orders, Justice M Duraisamy had observed that the court does not wish to interfere with the privileges of the Speaker and that it its the Speaker's discretion to disqualify the MLAs or not.
The matter came up while hearing DMK leader MK Stalin’s petition seeking a floor test in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on the grounds that Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami had lost majority in the House. Advocate Kapil Sibal, counsel for Stalin, had told the court that the state government intended to disqualify MLAs belonging to the DMK and those supporting Dhinakaran and then conduct a floor test in the Assembly. "The minority government will try to show that it has majority in the Assembly," the counsel for DMK told the court.
The High Court had earlier on Thursday sought the Advocate General’s clarification on whether the Assembly Speaker was going to disqualify 19 MLAs, who had pledged support to sidelined AIADMK Deputy General Secretary TTV Dhinakaran.
The AG informed the HC that action will be taken against the 19 MLAs, who had filed a petition with Governor Vidyasagar Rao withdrawing support to Chief Minsiter Edappadi Palaniswami. While the AG refused to give an assurance to the court, he said that the process of disqualification had already been initiated against the concerned MLAs.
The AG also went on to inform the court that the Speaker is the ultimate authority in the Assembly and the court cannot interfere into proceedings.
The court was also informed that Governor Vidyasagar Rao will return to Chennai on Monday.
Speaker P Dhanapal had issued notices to the legislators and asked them to appear before him on Thursday. However, the MLAs, who are presently lodged at a resort in Coorg, failed to appear before the Speaker.
Seeking time to appear before the Speaker, the counsel for the MLAs has sought for more documents from the Speaker. The counsel also said that the MLAs have sought protection from the Karnataka police to appear before the Speaker.
Earlier in the day, following arguments in the DMK case, senior advocate PS Raman appearing for the Dhinakaran camp had mentioned before Justice Duraisamy that certain MLAs also wished to implead in the case as the Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker had issued notices to 19 legislators asking why they should not be disqualified. The court had then asked the MLAs to file a plea.