National Democratic Alliance leaders met in L K Advani's room on Monday and decided to oppose the move made by Somnath Chatterjee, speaker of Lok Sabha, to convene a meeting of the speakers of the legislative assemblies on the issue of supremacy of the legislature over the Supreme Court.
Chatterjee told media persons that he planned to go ahead with the meeting scheduled for March 20. He was upset with the Supreme Court directive to former Jharkhand chief minister Shibu Soren to take the confidence vote in the House on March 11 instead of March 15 as directed by the governor of the state.
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The leaders who attended the meeting included former finance minister Jaswant Singh, former defence minister and convenor of the NDA George Fernandes, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, S S Ahluwalia, all from Bharatiya Janata Party, Mamta Banerjee of Trinamul Congress, Yerran Naidu of Telugu Desam Party, and Shukhde Singh Dhindsa of Shiromani Akali Dal.
George Fernandes said that the NDA was deeply disturbed with the attitude of the speaker and his role in creating the controversy.
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"The Jharkhand issue related to the constitutional misconduct of the governor, who chose to defy the Constitution and install a minority government. He also appointed a relatively junior member of the House as pro-tem speaker instead of nominating a senior member for this job," he pointed out.
He defended the action of the Supreme Court and said that the court was well within its jurisdiction to quash the action of the governor.
The NDA did not call for boycott of the proposed meeting.
Vijay Kumar Malhotra told newsmen that Mamta Banerjee had offered to move a no-confidence motion against speaker Somnath Chatterjee but was prevailed upon by senior leaders of the NDA.