Disqualifying lawmakers of Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam for defying whip during the trust vote on July 22 will be the trickiest task for Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee.
The party has four MPs; two voted for the government and two against. All four certainly cannot attract disqualification under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution and yet the Speaker has been asked to disqualify all four.
He has to first decide upon the validity of one of the two whips issued to these MPs before proceeding with disqualifying any of them.
The split in the party created the problem, with two MPs remaining with the original MDMK led by Vaiko and two others forming a parallel MDMK that has aligned with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.
On the day of the voting, leaders of both factions issued separate whips and later moved the Speaker's office to disqualify and expel those who defied each other's whip.
The Vaiko group is in a soup as it did not inform the Lok Sabha Secretariat about the removal of rebel L Ganesan as leader of the MDMK parliamentary group, the capacity