The Supreme Court's decision to examine Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar's authority as the Rajya Sabha chairman in suspending AAP MP Raghav Chadha, who had included the names of six MPs, without their consent, in a proposed select panel to examine the Delhi services bill.
Chadha was suspended on August 11, following the Rajya Sabha's approval of a resolution put forth by the leader of the House, Piyush Goyal. Goyal accused Chadha of falsely informing the House that six MPs (Narhari Amin, S Phangnon Konyak, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Sasmit Patra, M Thambidurai, and S Niranjan Reddy) had agreed to be part of a 19-member select committee responsible for examining the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2023.
Chadha’s counsel, senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, told a bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra that even if one assumed that the charge of not taking consent of the MPs before including their names in the proposed panel violated Rule 72 of the Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Council of States, it did not amount to breach of privilege either of the MPs or of Rajya Sabha to warrant his suspension.
Dwivedi raised a question regarding whether the Rajya Sabha chairman possessed the authority to suspend Chadha during the interim period by invoking the powers outlined in Rules 256 and 266, especially when the purported violation of Rule 72(2) was still under investigation by the privileges committee.