Hyderabad: The Supreme Court on Thursday (September 24) upheld the Telangana high court’s order disqualifying Danam Nagender as an MLA in the state.Nagender had contested the last Lok Sabha elections in May 2024 as a Congress candidate while continuing to be an MLA of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), on whose ticket he won the assembly elections from the Khairatabad constituency in Hyderabad six months earlier.Two Telangana MLAs, Padi Kaushik Reddy of the BRS and A. Maheshwar Reddy of the BJP, had petitioned the high court after Telangana assembly speaker Gaddam Prasad Kumar struck down their plea seeking Nagender’s disqualification as MLA in accordance with the Tenth Schedule to the Constitution – the anti-defection law – and Article 191(2), which disqualifies MLAs and MLCs if they are found guilty of violating the Tenth Schedule.The speaker had dismissed them on the grounds that he could not sit in judgement over Nagender’s conduct outside the House, something the high court had struck down last week.When Kaushik Reddy and Maheshwar Reddy approached the high court, a division bench comprising Chief Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh and Justice G.M. Mohiuddin in its 91-page judgment on September 18 rejected the speaker’s verdict, holding that he “committed a serious jurisdictional error”.In concluding that Nagender’s conduct outside the assembly, including contesting as a Congress candidate despite being a BRS MLA on paper, did not fall within the remit of his powers under the anti-defection law, the speaker disregarded the facts placed before him “in breach of [his] constitutional obligations”, the high court said. It disqualified Nagender under the Tenth Schedule with effect from April 23, 2024, the date he filed his nomination as a Congress candidate for the Lok Sabha elections.Nagender then filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court the following day, arguing that there can be no judicial review of the speaker’s decisions as they were internal to the House.When the matter came up on Thursday before three judges of the Supreme Court, namely Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana, the bench observed that the high court’s judgement was based on a correct interpretation of the law and no interference was called for, LiveLaw reported.“You had a fixed deposit as MLA, you tried for share market as MP, and now you lost the fixed deposit … Your case is ‘aaya Ram, gaya Ram, phir aaya Ram?’,”, LiveLaw quoted Justice Bagchi as saying.Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, who appeared for Nagender, submitted that the Tenth Schedule does condone legislators giving up their party membership in some cases. “Ghar wapsi [homecoming]?”, Justice Bagchi commented again in a lighter vein. But the bench proceeded to point out that paragraph 2(1)(b), which Rohatgi invoked, is only applicable to lawmakers voting against a whip and not to them giving up membership of a party.For its part, the counsel representing the BRS denied that it condoned Nagender’s actions and recalled that its own MLA had filed the disqualification petition against him, per LiveLaw. The bench then concluded that there are no grounds to interfere with the high court’s verdict.Welcoming the top court’s judgment, Nagender told mediapersons that he will contest a byelection, now that he will vacate his seat, and said he has full confidence in his strengths in the “people’s court”.“Khairatabad is Nagender’s home turf. People of the constituency will vouch for my contribution. I will definitely win,” he said, adding that chief minister Revanth Reddy will clarify his (Nagender’s) position when asked if the Congress will field him in the contest.Maheshwar Reddy, the BJP’s legislature party leader who also filed the petition against Nagender, said the judgment was a lesson to the chief minister who promoted defections to the Congress from other parties. Inspired by the judgement, the BJP will wage legal battles on one hand and lead mass struggles on the other against the ‘unconstitutional ways’ of the Congress, he said.BJP state president N. Ramchander Rao said the sense of the Supreme Court judgment was that there was no place for ‘aaya Ram, gaya Ram’ politics and there could be no murder of democracy in the name of “ghar wapsi”.Union coal minister and Secunderabad MP G. Kishan Reddy said the judgment was a lesson not only to the Congress but the BRS. The latter party also promoted defections and even appointed two turncoat leaders as ministers when it was in power, he recalled.BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao in a post on X alleged that Rahul Gandhi and Revanth Reddy had believed they could “steal a mandate through defections and hide behind the speaker”. He concluded his post with the remark “mark my words MLA chor Rahul Gandhi”.The BRS’s deputy leader in the assembly T. Harish Rao also wrote on X saying the judgment was a “slap in the face to the Congress’s duplicity on saving the Constitution”.Currently there are eight other BRS MLAs in the Congress camp.Kaushik Reddy, the BRS petitioner in the case, told a media conference that his was a two-and-a-half year legal battle against Nagender that has finally paid off.Congress MP for Bhongir Chamala Kiran Kumar Reddy said his party will honour the court judgment with a rider that it had a grievance with it.“If such decisions were taken in independent India long back, democracy would have been safeguarded against parties like the BRS and the BJP. If a byelection was forced in Khairatabad now, the result will be the same as in Jubilee Hills and Secunderabad cantonment constituencies, where the Congress won byelections comfortably,” he said.