New Delhi, May 5
The Supreme Court today said no ruling party should misuse its thumping majority in the Assembly to expel opposition members as it would trigger a chain of such actions across the country.

This remark came from a Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan while hearing the petition by former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, challenging his expulsion from the assembly.

The Bench, which included Justices RV Raveendran, P Sathasivam, JM Panchal and RM Lodha, expressed the sentiment when senior counsel Ashok Desai, appearing for the Punjab Assembly, argued that the Assembly was competent to punish any member for an offence committed outside the House. Punishment such as expulsion could be handed out even if the offence had nothing to do with the privileges of the member, Desai said.

Desai was making this point in response to a query from the CJI who wanted to know the breach of privilege committed by Capt Singh for which he was expelled from the House on September 10 last year.

Senior Counsel K Parasaran and UU Lalit, assisted by Atul Nanda, had earlier contended that the Assembly had gone beyond its jurisdiction while expelling their client for an alleged offence committed by him in his capacity as Chief Minister during the previous tenure of the Assembly. The offence related to exempting 32.1 acres of land from the Amritsar Improvement Trust (AIT) scheme on the Jalandhar-Amritsar road to enable a private builder to develop it.

Desai, assisted by senior counsel Ravi Shankar Prasad and the state's standing counsel Ajay Pal, cited an instance in Britain where a member was expelled from the House for a sexual offence committed outside the House.