Tenth Schedule pleas must be decided quickly even when an Assembly has time left, Supreme Court holds

4 November 2026

The Supreme Court has directed the Speaker of the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly to decide within two months a disqualification petition pending against MLA Nirmala Sapre. The Bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana laid down a wider rule: a petition under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, the anti-defection law, must be decided quickly even if there is no immediate urgency and even if considerable time is left before the Assembly's term ends. Sapre is a first-time MLA from Bina in Sagar district who won the seat on an Indian National Congress ticket in 2023. The petition against her was filed in July 2024 by the Leader of the Opposition, Umang Singhar, on the ground that she voluntarily gave up her Congress membership. It has been pending for over two years. The High Court had refused to set a time limit, finding no urgency; the Supreme Court took the opposite view. The Tenth Schedule, inserted by the Fifty-second Amendment in 1985, lets a presiding officer disqualify a member for defection.