Roy as PAC head violates convention, BJP tells HC

KOLKATA: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator Ambika Roy on Tuesday told the Calcutta high court that appointment of Mukul Roy as chairman of the public accounts committee (PAC) of the West Bengal assembly violated a five-decade-old convention of an opposition party MLA getting the post.

Mukul Roy, who left the BJP and returned to the Trinamool Congress on June 11, was appointed PAC chairman by speaker Biman Banerjee on July 9.

On June 18, leader of the opposition in the assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, submitted a petition before the speaker saying Mukul Roy, the legislator from Kishnanagar North constituency in Nadia district, should be disqualified under anti-defection law as he didn’t resign from the BJP before switching sides.

Hearing the petition on Tuesday, a division bench of acting Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj said the appeal for Roy’s disqualification as an MLA is lying before the speaker and not the court.

Senior advocate CS Vaidyanathan, appearing for Ambika Roy, told the HC that the speaker incorrectly assumed that Mukul Roy was in the BJP when he filed his papers on June 25. “Power exercised by the speaker must not be arbitrary,” he said.

He said the Supreme Court last year ruled that speakers of assemblies and Parliament must declare their decisions on disqualification petitions within three months.

The matter will be heard again on September 6.