Supreme Court: The special bench of Jagdish Singh Khehar, CJ and Ranjan Gogoi and R.K. Agrawal, JJ refused to stay the swearing in ceremony of Manohar Parrikar as the Chief Minister of Goa and the asked Mridula Sinha, the Governor of the State to conduct a floor test on 16.03.2017 to determine whether the Chief Minister administered the oath of office, has support of the majority.
As per the result of the electoral process in the State of Goa which was declared on 11.03.2017, the BJP Legislature Party had the support of 21 MLAs out of the 40 elected members. However, the leader of the Congress Legislature Party had alleged that the support in favour of the BJP is a mis-representation of fact.
The bench hence, said that the instant sensitive and contentious issue raised on behalf of the petitioner, can be resolved by a simple direction, requiring the holding of a floor test at the earliest. The holding of the floor test would remove all possible ambiguities, and would result in giving the democratic process, the required credibility.
It was directed that all pre-requisite formalities for holding a floor test, including the formalities required to be completed by the Election Commission, be completed by 15.03.2017. [Chandrakant Kavlekar v. Union of India, 2017 SCC OnLine SC 240, order dated 14.03.2017]
