Judicial review of Speaker’s decision

Judicial review of Speaker’s decision

Subject – Polity

Context – Supreme Court sets aside Manipur Speaker’s order disqualifying three MLAs for defection

Concept –

• Constitutional courts cannot judicially review disqualification proceedings under the Tenth Schedule (anti-defection law) of the Constitution until the Speaker or Chairman makes a final decision on merits.
• A 28-year-old judgment of the Supreme Court in the Kihoto Hollohan versus Zachillu and Others has said that “judicial review cannot be available at a stage prior to the making of a decision by the Speaker/Chairman and a quiatimet action would not be permissible. Nor would interference be permissible at an interlocutory stage of the proceedings.”
• “The only exception for any interlocutory interference being cases of interlocutory disqualifications or suspensions which may have grave, immediate and irreversible repercussions and consequence.”
• Conditions for judicial review: The February 1992 judgment had said that even the scope of judicial review against an order of a Speaker or Chairman in anti-defection proceedings would be confined to jurisdictional errors, that is, “infirmities based on violation of constitutional mandate, mala fides, non-compliance with rules of natural justice and perversity.”
• The Constitution Bench had upheld the anti-defection law.
• The reason for limiting the role of courts in ongoing defection proceedings is that the “office of the Speaker is held in the highest respect and esteem in parliamentary traditions.”
• But the Speaker’s decision was subject to judicial review as he acted as a tribunal while deciding cases under the anti-defection law.
• The Speaker of the House does not have the power to review his own decisions to disqualify a candidate.
• Ignoring a petition for disqualification is not merely an irregularity but a violation of constitutional duties.

To know about Anti-Defection law, please refer August 2021 DPN.