Bengaluru: Karnataka Assembly speaker KR Ramesh Kumar today disqualified 14 rebel Congress and JDS MLAs under the anti-defection law. The move comes just a day before the newly sworn in Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa govt’s trust vote in the assembly tomorrow.
The disqualified members include eleven of the Congress and three from Janata Dal Secular. With this the majority mark in the assembly comes nearer to the BJP’s numbers. The total 16 members now stand disqualified from the assembly till the end of its term. They will not be able to fight the by-elections for the 16 constituencies.
The speaker took a decision and announced this in a press conference today about the developments. He has refused to resign from the post of speaker also.
The fourteen legislators today disqualified include Pratapgouda Patil, BC Patil, Shivaram Hebbar, ST Somashekhar, BA Basavaraja, Anand Singh, R Roshan Baig, Munirathna, K Sudhakar, MTB Nagaraj, AH Vishwanath, K Gopalaiah and Narayana Gowda and Shrimanth Patil.