HC disposes of Assam Assembly appeal against stay on opposition leader de-recognition

GUWAHATI: Gauhati High Court today disposed of an appeal of the Assam Legislative Assembly secretariat seeking vacation of the same court’s stay order of January 12 by a single judge in connection with the de-recognition of Congress leader Debabrata Saikia as leader of the opposition in the Assam Assembly.

Dismissing the writ petition filed by the Assembly secretariat, a division bench of the court asked it to move the single-judge bench and seek redress.

Earlier, the single bench of the high court ordered an interim stay on the Assembly speaker’s notification withdrawing leader of the opposition status from Congress Legislature Party leader Debabrata Saikia in the 126-member Assam Assembly.

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The notification had stated that the Congress did not have the required number of 21 (one sixth of the total number of MLAs) members in the Assembly and, hence, the leader of the opposition status was withdrawn from Saikia. The Congress then had 20 members after the defection of its MLAs Rajdeep Goala and Ajanta Neog to the BJP last month. The number has further decreased to 19 following the demise of Badarpur MLA Jamal Uddin Ahmed last night. The Congress had won 26 seats in the 2016 Assembly elections to be the single largest party.