Trust Vote: The MDMK imbroglio continues

Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee has passed the buck to the House Privilege Committee to wriggle out of the tricky issue of two petitions by the rival groups of Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, seeking disqualification of each other's MPs for defying whip on the trust vote on July 22.

He wants the Privilege Committee to decide, which group is the real MDMK as he can consider one of the two petitions only after knowing which MP is from the real MDMK.

The Tamil Nadu party has four MPs, two voted for the UPA government and two against. Two MPs who remained with the original MDMK led by Vaiko voted against the government while the other two of the parallel MDMK vote for the government.

L Ganesan, who continues to be leader of the MDMK parliamentary group even after defecting from the Vaiko group, had moved a petition seeking disqualification of Dr C Krishnan and S Ravichandran for voting against the government despite the whip he issued.

However, another petition by Dr Krishnan foxed the Speaker as it sought disqualification of Ganesan and Gingee Ramachandran for defying the whip he had issued to vote against the government.

The Speaker heard both the sides in the third week of September and then washed his hands off by referring to the Privilege Committee to decide the basic issue of the split in MDMK and recommend which petition he should take into consideration.