india

Updated: Jul 26, 2019 10:19 IST

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed two independent MLAs from Karnataka to withdraw their plea seeking trust vote in the assembly, noting that the plea has become infructuous since the floor test had already been conducted on Tuesday.

Earlier this week, the two MLAs had requested for an urgent hearing of their petition.

A bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi noted that since the trust vote had already been moved by the HD Kumaraswamy government on Tuesday that bowed out of office after losing confidence in the Assembly, the MLAs withdraw the petition.

The presence of two senior lawyers, Abhishek Manu Singhvi (for the Speaker) and Rajeev Dhawan (for Kumaraswamy) was recorded.However, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi who had earlier appeared for the two legislators was not present in the court as he was said to be out of Delhi. The apex court expressed displeasure over the senior lawyer not appearing before it for seeking withdrawal of the plea.

Both Dhavan and Singhvi told the court that they had no objection to the two legislators’ plea for withdrawing their petition since the floor test had been conducted.

The two legislators R Shankar and H Nagesh had rushed to the court on Monday with their plea. On Tuesday when the matter was taken up it was adjourned after the court was promised by the speaker that the trust vote would take place on the same day.

The Congress-JD(S) coalition government in Karnataka headed by Kumaraswamy collapsed on Tuesday with 99 members voting for the motion and 105 against it in the House with an effective strength of 205 members.