HP High Court defers hearing on plea for April 30

Vijay Arora

Legal Correspondent

Shimla, April 25

The HP High Court today deferred hearing on a petition filed by three Independent MLAs alleging therein that the Speaker is not accepting their resignations from the Legislative Assembly and sought intervention of the court in this regard.

Today, the matter was listed before a division bench comprising Chief Justice MS Ramachandra Rao and Justice Jyotsna Rewal Dua. After hearing the matter at length, the bench listed the matter for further hearing on April 30 at 4.15 pm.

During the course of the hearing, senior counsel Maninder Singh appeared for the petitioners. On the other side, through video conference, senior advocate Kapil Sibal represented the Speaker of Vidhan Sabha before the court.

The three Independent MLAs Hoshiyar Singh from Dehra constituency, KL Thakur from Nalagarh and Ashish Sharma from Hamirpur constituency, had submitted their resignations from the membership of the Assembly to the Secretary of the Assembly on March 22. Later, they met Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania and requested for the acceptance of their resignations. They also met Governor Shiv Pratap Shukla.

As the Speaker has not yet accepted their resignations, the three MLAs have approached the High Court.

The trio have filed a petition against non-acceptance of the resignations and issuing show cause notices to them by the Speaker.

They have contended that they submitted their resignations voluntarily and the Speaker should accept the resignation. The petitioners alleged in the petition that the Speaker, instead of accepting their resignation, has issued show cause notices to them seeking their response in this regard. They further alleged that the action of the Speaker was arbitrary and wrong. 

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