Hyderabad High Court issues notice to assembly speaker

In a major development in the contempt case of Congress MLAs Mr Komatireddy and Mr. SA Sampath Kumar, the Hyderabad High Court on Tuesday issued a show cause notice to the Telangana Speaker besides issuing notices to the Telangana Assembly Secretary and the Secretary to the Law department, directing them to personally appear before the court on September 17.

According to senior advocates of the High Court, it is first time that a show cause notice has been issued to the Speaker in a contempt case. Often courts issue notices to the Speaker in defection cases and even if the Speaker does not respond, the court will not pronounce any order against the Speaker.

Justice B Siva Sankar Rao, while dealing with the contempt case of the Congress MLAs seeking to punish Mr. V Narasimhacharyulu, Assembly Secretary and Mr. V Niranjan Rao, Law Secretary for not restoring their membership of the House, observed “None of can escape from obeying the order of this court. to implement in order to uphold the majesty of justice.”

Referring to the developments in the case, right from the



setting aside of the resolution of the House expelling the members to filing of the contempt case , the judge pointed out “It indicates that the Speaker withheld the so-called permission for the de-notification of expulsion notification, which is per se willful disregard to the order of the court to ensure its non- implementation one way or other and is also indicated by the respondents taking time saying that they were persuading to implement the order of this court.”

The judge said “However, in view of restraint required, rather than directly impleading the Speaker as co-respondent to the contempt proceedings, issue notice as to why shall he not be impleaded as co-respondent for appearance and hearing and as to why contempt proceedings shall not be drafted by issue of Form-1 notice.” The judge said officers were taking shelter under the ruse that here was no de-notification. That was not required as it was very clear from the judgment that it was as if there was no expulsion, which was set aside by restoring the status quo ante of the petitioners as MLAs.