A day after the Supreme Court expressed its inability to force rebel MLAs to attend the Karnataka Assembly and left the decision on Speaker to go be rule book, the Congress-JD(S) coalition government is set to face a trust vote in the Assembly today.
State Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy’s future is at state, as he will try to prove if his coalition government still enjoys the majority support in the House or not. It will be tested as per direction of the Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar to move the confidence motion.
Prior to that on Wednesday, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s no-confidence motion was rejected by the Speaker. However, an appeal for Trust Vote floated by the Chief Minister was duly accepted as it was moved first by Chief Minister Kumaraswamy.
The existing political stalemate has put at stake the life of 13-month old Kumaraswamy government and leaving many important decisions in limbo, as the rebel Congress-JD(S) MLAs are in no mood to yield after the apex court cited its compulsion of not in a situation to force the rebels to be in the assembly session.
All the rebel Congress-JDS MLAs who are camping in Mumbai have stated that they won’t step back on their resignations or attend the session.
It maybe noted that a total of 16 MLAs – 13 from the Congress and three from JD(S) – have resigned. Two independent legislators R Shankar and H Nagesh have withdrawn their support to the coalition government already.
In the 225-member Karnataka assembly, the ruling combine has a strength of 117. In case the resignations of the 16 leaders are accepted, the ruling coalition’s tally will plummet to 101, reducing the Kumaraswamy government to a minority.
While the opposition camp of the BJP has 107 MLAs including two independents who have supported the party recently.
The situation reached such a level after 10 rebel MLAs had moved the apex court on 10 July alleging that the Karnataka Assembly Speaker was deliberately not accepting their resignations. Five more legislators submitted the plea last Saturday seeking identical relief.
On Monday, the apex had reserved its judgement despite a day-long hearing in the case. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of India pronounced its judgement on rebellious Karnataka MLAs’ plea regarding their resignation case.
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Appearing for the Karnataka Assembly speaker, Senior advocate A M Singhvi on Monday had told the Supreme Court Bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi that the State Assembly Speaker will decide on both disqualification and resignation of the rebel MLAs by today but the court should modify its earlier order regarding maintaining the status quo.
Senior advocate Mukul Rohtagi, appearing for the rebel legislators, had apprised the apex court the Speaker can be directed to decide on the resignation of these MLAs by the same day itself and he could later take a call on the disqualification proceedings.