KOLKATA: Calcutta High Court on Monday set aside Bengal assembly speaker Biman Banerjee’s ruling that Krishnanagar Uttar representative and Public Accounts Committee chairman Mukul Roy was a BJP MLA. The court set a four-week time frame for the speaker to decide on Mukul’s disqualification as member/chairman of PAC.
A division bench of Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj held that the impugned order of the speaker on February 11 was “clearly perverse”, making it a fit case for judicial review. “...Speaker has failed to take into account and consider the certificate submitted by petitioner (BJP MLA Ambika Roy) under Section 65B of the Evidence Act and has consequently held the electronic evidence as inadmissible,” the court said.
Banerjee had in February dismissed a disqualification petition by Ambika against Mukul. The speaker in his ruling had held that the documents provided by BJP in support of their prayer were not admissible.
