Telangana News

Telangana assembly speaker failed to exercise powers conferred upon him by the Constitution, the High court said.

Making it clear, the court noted that, the speaker has to decide on the applications filed for disqualification of Errabelli Dayakar Rao and 11 other MLAs from TDP, who had crossed over to the ruling TRS within three months of their election. But the speaker failed in doing it, the court said. 

A petition regarding this, filed by TDP leader Revanth Reddy, brought the interim orders. The petition stated that speaker accepted the version of 12 MLAs that they have merged without the ruling party and kept the applications to disqualify pending. 

The court even took note that in September last year, a Division Bench of the High Court had expressed hope that the Speaker would decide on the petitions in 3 months. But the merger version by the MLAs was accepted in March 2016, without finalizing the disqualification petitions.

The High court further said,“prima facie he has failed to exercise the jurisdiction conferred upon by him by paragraph six of X schedule”, adding that the Speaker must finalize the disqualification petitions first within 90 days.