Hearing the petition on the disqualification of Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister Panneerselvam and ten other legislators on voting against the trust vote in the state legislative assembly, the Supreme Court has issued a notice to the Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker to disclose why the disqualification petitions of eleven legislators were pending before him for over three years. 

The Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices AS Bopanna and RS Reddy has, on Wednesday, asked Tamil Nadu Speaker Dhanapal on why the disqualification petitions filed against eleven legislators including Panneerselvam have been pending before him for three years while he has taken action and disqualified 18 other ADMK MLAs in 2017 within a month of filing a similar petition against them. 

The plea was moved by the Tamil Nadu Opposition party DMK to the Apex court and during the hearing on Wednesday, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, who appeared for DMK's leader Sakkrapani who filed the petition, said that the delay of dealing with the disqualification petitions by the Tamil Nadu Speaker has been an unfair act in a democracy. 

By quoting the top court's order in the disqualification case of the Manipur MLA in which the court has fixed three months limit for the Speaker to pass the order on such petitions, Sibal said the Tamil Nadu Speaker has been violating the guidelines of the Supreme Court. After the hearing, the apex court bench has issued a notice to the Tamil Nadu Speaker for directed to file a response in four weeks following which the court has adjourned the hearing.

The case dates back to three years. On February 2017, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi  Palaniswami has rolled out the trust vote for his government. The ruling party has issued a whip to the lawmakers to vote in favor of the confidence motion. However, Pannerselvam, who then rivaled against the Chief Minister, had voted against the government along with ten other lawmakers. 

However, Edappadi Palaniswami has formed the government as the ruling party has a sound majority in the assembly. The DMK has filed a petition to the speaker to disqualify Pannerselvam and his faction for violating the whip's order and voting against the government and the petition has still been pending before the speaker. 

As the dissented faction has merged with the government, the Chief Minister has, in last month, said to the Speaker that the party hasn't issued any whip to the eleven MLAs. By citing that these eleven lawmakers hadn't violated the whip order as no whip was issued to them, the Chief Minister further called the Speaker to dismiss the disqualification petition filed against the eleven MLAs including Deputy Chief Minister Pannerselvam.