Supreme Court notice to Karnataka Speaker on MLA disqualification issue

• The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notice to Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa and Speaker K.G. Bopaiah on special leave petitions filed by seven of the 11 disqualified Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs challenging the Karnataka High Court order upholding the Speaker's decision.
• In their SLPs the MLAS said that they had no intention at all of leaving the BJP or membership of its legislature party and that their letter to the Governor was aimed only at cleansing the image of the party by getting rid of Mr. Yeddyurappa, "is the Speaker justified in disqualifying them on the ground that they had voluntarily given up membership of the BJP?"
• The other questions in the SLPs are: Does the Constitution contemplate the continuance of a Chief Minister whose government is perceived to be corrupt by the general public, by all the Opposition parties in the Legislature, even by the Lokayukta who is none other than a retired judge of the Supreme Court and the media, both electronic and prt? If not, could MLAs of the ruling party be punished with disqualification for making a representation to the Governor? If the Constitution does not tolerate such an (alleged) corrupt government, will the conduct of a few ruling party members in withdrawing support to a Chief Minister in a letter addressed to a neutral constitutional authority, namely the Governor, who is in a position to ensure replacement of the Chief Minister by another clean leader from the same party, amount to "defection" on the ground of their voluntarily giving up membership of the ruling party?
• The SLPs asked: When the Governor called upon the Chief Minister to prove that he continued to command the majority in the Assembly having regard to the fact that 14 BJP MLAs and six Independents had withdrawn support to his government, was it open to the Chief Minister and the Speaker to take recourse to the Tenth Schedule to disqualify them and thereby manipulate majority support for the Chief Minister?
• The SLPs assailed the High Court orders, dated October 18, October 29 and November 15, and said the petitioners had been denied their constitutional and democratic right to continue to represent their constituencies because of the Speaker's "unconstitutional, illegal, perverse and mala fide" order. The SLP sought to quash the impugned orders and an interim stay of their operation.