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Goa Congress president Girish Chodankar on Wednesday moved Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court order upholding the decision of the Goa Legislative Assembly to dismiss the plea seeking disqualification of 11 MLAs of INC who joined BJP in the Goa Legislative Assembly.

The plea has alleged that "Conveniently, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly allowed protection to the erstwhile members of the INC by invoking the protection guaranteed to a legislature party member granted only when the original political party of a member of the House (in this case, the INC) merges with another party."

Challenging the High Court order, Chodankar has raised the following questions to be decided before the apex court,

• Whether the merger of the original political party is a necessary pre-condition for the members of a legislature party to claim merger of their legislature party?
• More importantly, whether the protection granted under Para 4(1) of Schedule X can be granted to members of the legislature party in the absence of the merger of the original political party?

The plea states that the High Court has erroneous interpretation by construing the merger of the INC merely at the hands of 2/3rd of any legislature party, thereby, completely disrobing the INC of any role with respect to its merger and resultantly leaving the INC at the mercy of the legislature party.

The plea while referring to the judgment in the case of Shah Faruq Shabir & Ors. V. Govindrao Ramu Vasave & Ors. said that the precondition of the merger of INC i.e. the sine qua non for Para 4(2) to come into effect. The full bench in Shah Faruq held that the said merger necessarily emanating from outside the house must be prima facie demonstrated to invoke the protection guaranteed under Para 4.

The SLP has been filed by Lawmen & White (L&W), through its Partner, Mr. Ujjawal Anand Sharma, Mr. Prashant Sivarajan and Mr. D. Kumanan (AOR).

Case Title: Girish Chodankar Vs. The Speaker, Goa Legislative Assembly & Ors.