MLAs can attend Assembly, Court to continue hearing main petition
Morung Express News
Dimapur | February 11
The Kohima Bench of the Gauhati High Court on February 11 dismissed two pleas (Interlocutory Appeals) connected to a Writ Petition filed by the NPF. One was a plea seeking the court’s intervention to restrain 7 of its MLAs from attending the upcoming Nagaland Assembly Legislative session pending a final verdict on a Writ Petition filed by the party in July 2020.
The other was a plea filed by the 7 MLAs challenging the “maintainability of the writ petition” filed by the NPF.
As per the court’s ruling, the former was in essence a petition for “injunction” but devoid of the “ingredients” such petitions demand and thus, “cannot be entertained. As such, it is rejected and dismissed.” It also added, “The occasion to ask for such drastic order of restraining has not arisen in the first place”
The latter, the court said, was “without basis. As such, it is dismissed.” It said that the issue as “to whether perversity (conscious violation of a rule of law), as alleged, have been committed or not has to be decided in the writ petition itself…”
The Writ Petition was filed by the opposition NPF challenging the legality of the Nagaland Legislative Assembly Speaker rejecting and dismissing a petition to disqualify 7 NPF MLAs for allegedly going against party diktat. The 7 NPF MLAs had supported the ruling PDA coalition candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections earning the ire of their party, which had aligned with the Congress.
