New Delhi, April 12
The Supreme Court today dismissed the petitions of six MPs expelled in the cash-for-query scam, for review of its judgement upholding the Parliament’s decision, saying that there was no merit in their plea.

A five-judge Bench, headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan took up the matter in a chamber hearing to consider whether it merited any consideration in the face of comprehensive reasons laid down in a verdict given on January 10 by a five-judge constitution Bench, headed by the then CJI Y K Sabharwal with a four-to-one majority.

The other four judges in the Bench that heard the matter today were Justices C K Thakker, R V Raveendran, D K Jain and V S Sirpurkar. Justice Sirpurkar had come in place of former CJI Sabharwal, who retired four days after pronouncing the judgement.

Justice Raveendran, who had given a dissenting ruling in the original judgement on January 10, had held that Parliament has not been given any power under the Constitution to expel its members.

It was not immediately known as what was his view today as the review petitions are normally heard in chamber to consider if any factual error or any error of law had cropped in the judgement.

In fact, the six MPs - Raja Ram Pal, Ram Sewak Singh, Chhatrapal Singh Lodha, Suresh Chandel, Pradeep Gandhi and Anna Saheb M K Patil - in their review petitions had challenged Parliament’s power under Article 105(3) of the Constitution to expel any of its member and sought modification of the judgement.

They contended that Parliament had gone beyond the constitutional provisions to expel them from the House and the Court had also oversighted this while upholding their expulsion from the House.

Lodha was expelled from Rajya Sabha in the cash-for-query scam while Sakshi Maharaj was dismissed in the MPLAD scheme case by the Upper House, the remaining five who moved the review petitions were expelled from the Lok Sabha with five others.

The five others expelled MPs who did not prefer the review petitions, included Y G Mahajan, Chandra Prakash Singh and Manoj Kumar.

The Court in its original judgement had held that Parliament has power to expel its members for violating the privilege of the House as its “collective privilege” under Article 105 would prevail upon the powers and privileges of an individual MP if he had indulged in “gross misconduct” to use the same for personal gains.