T. Vaiphei, J.

The legality of the order of disqualifications dated 15-12-2015 issued by the respondent No. 2 and the official Gazette notification dated 15-12-2015 issued by the respondent No. 3 disqualifying the 14 petitioners from the Membership of the Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly ("the Assembly" for short) w.e.f. 15-12-2015 under Article 191(2) read with Paragraph 2(1)(a) and Paragraph 6(1)(2) of the Tenth Schedule to the Constitution of India are under challenge in this writ petition. Before proceeding further, it may be noted that the impugned order of disqualifications had earlier been stayed by the learned Single Judge on 7-1-2016, which was taken to appeal before the Apex Court. The Apex Court, after perusing the records, passed the order dated 18-2-2016 in S.L.P.(C) No. 779-780 of 2016 declining to interfere with the said interim order and instead directing the then Chief Justice (Acting) to place the case before the Division Bench for expeditious disposal, preferably, within two weeks. This is how this writ petition has been taken up by this Division Bench.

2. To say the least, this is a bizarre case; sometime facts can be really stranger than fiction. The said notification is the off-shoot of the order of disqualifications passed by the Speaker of the Assembly against the petitioners, but, interestingly, there are three versions of the disqualification order of the Speaker, which will be dealt with later on. In the general election to the Arunachal Pradesh State Legislative Assembly held in the month of April, 2014, 47 MLAs were elected on the tickets of Indian National Congress (INC); the 14 petitioners herein are some of them. The petitioner No. 14 (Sri T.N. Thongdok) was elected as the Deputy Speaker of the Assembly just after the election. The case of the petitioners is that they were not served with any independent order of the Speaker disqualifying them from their Membership of the Assembly and that they incidentally could caught hold of one of the orders signed by the then Speaker of the Assembly (Sri Nabam Rebia) on 15-12-2015, which was marked to the petitioner No. 4 though by the same order, another petitioner, namely, Sri Kumar Waii was also declared to have incurred disqualification under the 10th Schedule. According to the petitioners, they have reason to believe that there may not be any proper independent order of the Speaker pertaining to their disqualifications; the possibility of manufacturing such an order by the respondent Nos. 1 and 2 at some later point of time cannot be ruled out. As they were not served with an independent order of their disqualifications, apart from the document already annexed as Annexure-1, they are not in a position to annex any other order of their disqualifications which might have been issued or shown to have been issued by the respondent Nos. 1 and 2. In the current Assembly, the party wise composition of the State Legislature is as follows:

1. INC - 47;

2. BJP - 11 and

3. Independent - 2

The total strength of the House is 60.

3. It is the allegation of the petitioners that there was a strong sense of disquiet in the recent past among the 21 MLAs including the petitioners over the style of functioning of the Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh, namely, Sri Nabam Tuki (the respondent No. 4), who has now ceased to be the Chief Minister of the State during the pendency of this writ petition, and also against the improper behaviour of the respondent No. 2, who happens to be a close relative of the respondent No. 4. The petitioners were, therefore, compelled to voice their concern within the party within the permissible democratic manners for change of leadership of the party in order to bring about better socio-economic advancement of the State. They would like to emphasise that they had remained loyal to the party, and were proud to be the Members of the Indian National Congress Party(I). According to the petitioners, a series of incidents took pl