New Delhi, May 30
The last week’s midnight proclamation of the President dissolving the Bihar Vidhan Sabha, kept in suspended animation since the imposition of the Central rule in the state on March 7 after the electors had thrown a hung House, was today challenged in the Supreme Court in a petition seeking quashing of the dissolution notification.

A public interest litigation (PIL) filed by a voter, Shiv Kumar Prasad Singh from Keni village of Gaya district in Bihar, has challenged the Presidential proclamation on the grounds that it was based on a “colourable” recommendation made by Governor Buta Singh for dissolving the newly elected Vidhan Sabha, when its members had not even taken the oath of office after the February poll.

The PIL, likely to come up for hearing before a vacation Bench on June 6, also accompanied an interim application for the stay of the election process in the state till the matter was adjudicated by the court. “The recommendation made by the Governor for the dissolution of the State Assembly lacks bona fides and is a colourable exercise of constitutional power,” it said.

However, some MLAs of the dissolved Vidhan Sabha belonging to the NDA and breakaway faction of Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), plan to file separate writ petitions in a day or two as affected parties, their party sources told The Tribune.

Terming the Union Home Ministry’s notification for the dissolution of the Assembly as unconstitutional, the PIL said “it deserves to be quashed” because it has thwarted any successful culmination of the mandate of the electorate into forming a popular government, which was in sight on May 22, when MLAs belonging to the NDA and a group from the LJP had made a serious attempt in this direction.

“The petitioner understands that there was absolutely no reliable information available with the Governor for making such recommendation to the Union Home Ministry for the dissolution of the Assembly. The only object, in his (Governor’s) mind, was that a non-RJD government is not allowed to be formed at any cost,” the petitioner alleged.

This was evident from the fact that the Union Cabinet held its meeting in a haste in post midnight, treating the Governor’s recommendation to be “most urgent matter and recommended to the President for exercising his power under Article 174(2) of the Constitution” to dissolve the Assembly as President’s rule under Article 356 was already in force in the state since March 7, the petitioner contended.