It appears Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has finally had his way in preventing the entry of two expelled Telangana Congress MLAs – Komatireddy Venkat Reddy from Nalgonda and S A Sampath Kumar from Alampur assembly constituencies –into the state legislative assembly again.
A division bench of the Hyderabad high court on Tuesday imposed a two-month stay on the implementation of the single judge bench verdict delivered last month restoring the assembly membership of two Congress MLAs. The case has been deferred by four weeks for further hearing.
The TRS government roped in senior most advocate Mukul Rohatgi to argue the case on behalf of the law secretary and also the state assembly secretary, against whom the single judge bench issued contempt of court notices.
The government questioned the authority of the court in serving notices on assembly speaker S Madhusudhana Chary for not following the order in restoring the assembly membership of Komatireddy and Sampath.
With the division bench imposing stay on the single judge bench judgement for a period of two months, the two Congress leaders have more or less have lost their eligibility to continue as MLAs.
In any case, the TRS government is contemplating conduct of early elections to the state assembly and KCR might, at any time, dissolve the state assembly in September.
Once the assembly is dissolved, Komatireddy and Sampath will automatically lose their assembly membership and they will not get any chance to come to the House again, unless they are re-elected.
So, KCR’s objective of ensuring that the two MLAs would not return to the assembly at least this term has more or less been fulfilled!
