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Keisham Meghachandra Singh v. The Hon'ble Speaker Manipur Legislative Assembly & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2020 INSC 65Decided 21 Jan 2020
Civil Appeal No. 547 of 2020
Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman · Justice Aniruddha Bose · Justice V. Ramasubramanian

Background

After the 2017 Manipur Assembly elections produced a hung result, a Congress-party-elected MLA switched sides and became a minister in a BJP-led government. Multiple disqualification petitions were filed against him before the Speaker under the Constitution's anti-defection provisions (the Tenth Schedule), but the Speaker simply did not decide them for years. The petitioner approached the Manipur High Court, which found the Speaker's inaction unlawful and his conduct as a Minister amounted to defection, but the High Court declined to grant direct relief since a similar question about judicial power over Speaker inaction was pending before a larger Supreme Court Bench. The matter reached the Supreme Court by appeal.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that a Speaker's prolonged failure to decide a disqualification petition is not shielded from judicial review, and that the Speaker is required to decide such petitions within a reasonable time: the Court fixed an outer limit of three months from filing, barring exceptional circumstances. However, the Court declined to itself declare the MLA disqualified or to issue a writ removing him as minister, since the Assembly's term was not about to expire (unlike an earlier precedent where it was), making direct intervention unnecessary. Instead, it set aside the High Court's judgment and directed the Speaker to decide the pending disqualification petitions within four weeks, with liberty for parties to return to the Supreme Court if that deadline too was not honoured. The Court also urged Parliament to consider replacing the Speaker with an independent tribunal for deciding such disputes, given recurring delays and conflicts of interest.

Lesson Learnt

A Speaker cannot indefinitely sit on anti-defection complaints: courts can enforce a firm time limit (three months, as a general rule) for such decisions, giving ordinary citizens and political candidates a concrete benchmark to hold elected officials accountable for defection within a reasonable time.

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

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