House ruckus: HC quashes charges on 3 Kerala ex-MLAs

The Kerala high court on Friday quashed criminal proceedings against three former Congress MLAs for causing a ruckus in the state legislative assembly in 2015.

The former MLAs –– MA Vaheed, Dominic Presentation and K Sivadasan Nair –– were accused of blocking women MLAs, touching them inappropriately and used words that elicited disgust inside the legislative assembly on March 13, 2015 while then-finance minister KM Mani was preparing to present the state budget. The ruckus erupted as MLAs from the Left Democratic Front (LDF) staged protests to obstruct Mani from presenting the budget for his alleged involvement in the bar licence renewal bribery case.

The bench of justice PV Kunhikrishnan on Friday held that presenting the budget is the constitutional duty of a finance minister and the complainants were trying to obstruct it. “In such situation, it cannot be said that there is an intention to outrage the modesty, but the intention is to see that the finance minister present the budget, which is his constitutional duty,” it said.

The legislators were booked under sections 341 (wrongful restraint), 354 (assault or criminal force to outrage a woman’s modesty) and 34 (acts done with criminal intent) of the IPC on the complaints of two former woman LDF MLAs – Jameela Prakasam and KK Lathika

“The members of legislative assembly have no right to obstruct the finance minister in presenting a budget except to demonstrate a peaceful protest against the same, if they are aggrieved. In such circumstances, I am of the considered opinion that section 341 IPC is not attracted in the facts and circumstance of the case,” bench said.

The court underlined that the complaints in these cases do not disclose the essential ingredients of the offences which are alleged against the accused.