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Ashish Shelar & Ors. vs The Maharashtra Legislative Assembly & Anr.

Writ Petition (Civil) · 2022 INSC 116Decided 28 Jan 2022
Writ Petition (Civil) No. 797 of 2021
A.M. Khanwilkar · Dinesh Maheshwari · C.T. Ravikumar

Background

During a heated Monsoon Session of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly on 5 July 2021, members of the opposition BJP clashed with the presiding Chairman and ruling-coalition members over how the House business was being conducted. Shortly after an apology was exchanged over an earlier scuffle, the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs moved, and the House passed by majority vote, a resolution suspending 12 BJP MLAs, including the petitioners, from the Assembly for contempt of the House. Crucially, the suspension was not limited to the remainder of that session but was imposed for a full one year. The suspended MLAs challenged the resolution in the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, illegal and passed without any notice or opportunity to be heard.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that while a legislative body does have inherent power to maintain order and can, in a graded manner (as under Assembly Rule 53), direct a disruptive member's withdrawal, even up to the remainder of an ongoing session, it cannot extend a suspension beyond that session without amounting to something far more serious than a "procedural irregularity." The Court held that suspending members for a full year, well beyond the remainder of the session, was not a lesser measure but effectively an unauthorized, undemocratic punishment: it deprived the affected constituencies of representation, was never routed through the proper privilege-committee procedure under the Rules, and had no notice or hearing given to the accused members, violating Articles 14 and 21. If the conduct genuinely warranted permanent removal, the House had a different, established route (expulsion), which it did not invoke. The Court declared the resolution "non est," unconstitutional and irrational insofar as it purported to extend beyond the remainder of the July 2021 session, and directed that the petitioners be treated as having enjoyed all consequential benefits of Assembly membership from the end of that session onward.

Lesson Learnt

A legislature's power to discipline its own members for disorderly conduct is real but not unlimited: a suspension can validly last only as long as necessary to restore order in the ongoing session; extending it further, without following due process or the proper expulsion procedure, is unconstitutional and can be struck down by courts even though it stems from the legislature's "internal" proceedings.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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