HC rejects plea over Assembly
The Hyderabad High Court on Friday dismissed two petitions challenging the notification issued by Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan on September 6, dissolving the Assembly on the advice of the Cabinet and the notification of the Election Commi-ssion on October 6 to hold elections.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Thottathil B. Radhakrishnan and Justice S.V. Bhatt while dismissing the petitions concurred with the judgement of the HC in R. Krishnaiah vs. Union of India which held “where the Governor has dissolved the State Assembly on the advice of the Council of Ministers, his decision cannot be challenged except on the grounds of mala fides and irrelevant considerations and that when the decision of the Governor is based on the advice of Ministers, the Court cannot go into the sufficiency of the advice.”
Former minister D.K. Aruna had urged that the court direct the Governor to summon the House under Article 174 to invoke his independent discretionary power and place the recommendation of the Cabinet to dissolve the House for its opinion. The bench said “We are in respectful agreement with such propositions of law stated in the above judgement and we follow them.” The bench noted “Article 163(3) of the Constitution provides that the question whether any, and if so what, advice was tendered by ministers to the governor shall not be inquired into in any court.”
Mr P. Sheshank Reddy, another petitioner, questioned the notification issued by the EC advancing the schedule summary revision of the electoral rolls. To this, the bench cited its judgement in the case of Komireddy Krishna Vijay Azad v The EC wherein it was ruled that “the mere fact that, according to the petitioner, the sizeable group of new voters may fall within the basket if 01.01.2018 is taken as a cut off date, does not make any distinction on the facts of the case because the constitutional mandate does not embolden us to say that a caretaker government should be permitted to continue to enable the finalisation of voters’ list and further push the elections.”