Supreme court upholds the appointment of 3 nominated MLAs for the Puducherry assembly

The 3 nominated MLAs case of the Puducherry assembly was lingering for almost one and half year and the supreme court on Friday had finally upheld the verdict Madras High Court which told that the appointment of 3 nominated MLAs by the home ministry and the LG of Puducherry is a legitimate one.

Puducherry LG Kiran Bedi choose 3 names for the post of nominated MLAs for the Puducherry assembly and had sent the list to the ministry of home for the approval and the home ministry had approved for the nomination of these 3 people to be the nominated MLAs who can be appointed without facing the elections.

This was the time when there was a huge power tussle between the Puducherry Chief minister Narayanasamy and the Lieutenant governor Kiran Bedi over who has more power in the state, is it the government which is chosen by people or the LG who is appointed by the central government.

The congress government was concerned over the name list since the 3 people referred by the LG Kiran Bedi has pure BJP background,Swaminathan is the Puducherry BJP chief who had a debacle in the elections and other two members were also from the BJP background, The chief minister asked how can the LG autonomously select the MLAs without the consent of the state government and also alleged that the BJP is trying to enter the Puducherry through the back gate by appointing these BJP men as nominated MLAs of the Puducherry assembly.

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LG Kiran Bedi nominated these 3 MLAs during the month of July 2017 and the 3 nominated MLAs weren't allowed inside the Puducherry assembly itself by the speaker during many occasions. The tug war between the Puducherry Congress government and the LG Kiran Bedi was just widening after the issue & the then the Puducherry government decided to approach the Madras high court. They argued that the BJP functionaries were nominated through the backdoor by the center by violating the constitutional provisions. 

The Madras high court after listening to the arguments had put an end to the constitutional crisis by upholding the decision of the LG on the appointment based on the Union territories act of 1963 where it says that the union could nominate the members of the legislative assembly.

Even after the verdict of the Madras high court, the conflict still continued at the Puducherry assembly and the MLAs weren't allowed inside by the speaker of the assembly, The speaker told that the order was against the nature of justice.

As the crisis kept on going for a while, Congress MLA Lakshminarayanan again approached the supreme court, challenging the order of the Madras high court.

After all the arguments since the month of July 2018, Supreme court upheld the order of Madras high court and started that the Union government has all rights to appoint the MLAs for the union territory and the state government's consent is not necessarily needed.

This comes as a big shock and setback for the Puducherry Congress government as they have 3 BJP men inside the assembly now, But the legal experts say that these nominated MLAs doesn't have rights to vote during the important resolutions or during any floor tests as they don't have power for it. Hence the constitutional crisis of Puducherry assembly on the 3 nominated MLAs comes to an end after this order of SC on Friday.

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