Special Judge Dinesh Rai passed the order on an application made by Soren seeking permission to participate in the floor test.
Hemant Soren had stepped down as Chief Minister of Jharkhand on January 31 in the wake of his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
Champai Soren of JMM was then sworn in as the new Chief Minister and has to prove his majority on the floor on February 5.
State’s Advocate General (AG) Rajeev Ranjan told the Court that ED’s objection to Soren appearing for floor test was proof that the investigating agency’s intention was to bring down the government.
“The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had vehemently objected to our plea. But we told the court that the cat is out of the bag. We told the court that the ED’s hurry in arresting the former Chief Minister was not for investigating the case but to bring down the government and now it doesn’t want him to participate in the floor test,” the AG said.
Voting in the floor test is a fundamental right of the applicant Soren and the same cannot be defeated by the mechanism of inflicting false case and arrest, it was submitted.
“Voting in the floor test has nothing to do with the investigation and should not have been objected to, by the ED.”
In the application, it was further stated that being a sitting Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) in the current Jharkhand Vidhan Sabha, Soren has a right to appear in the Special Session of the State Assembly.
Source: Barandbench
