Rajasthan Speaker CP Joshi on Thursday listed ‘anti-party activities, skipping party meeting, going incommunicado’ as grounds on which disqualification of 19 rebel Congress MLAs, including former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot, was sought.

“MLAs didn’t attend party meet, they’re indulging in anti-party activities. They’re in a Haryana hotel, incommunicado and sought floor test against their own party,” Kapil Sibal, lawyer for Rajasthan Speaker CP Joshi said in Supreme Court, according to news agency ANI.

On this, Justice Arun Mishra remarked,  the “voice of dissent cannot be suppressed. In a democracy, can somebody be shut down like this?”

The Speaker had moved the Supreme Court against the high court order that barred any disqualification proceeding against the rebel MLAs till July 24. The Speaker had served show cause notices on the 19 MLAs after the Congress said that they skipped consecutive legislature party meetings despite whips.

Sibal, a senior Congress leader, former union minister and a lawyer,  added that the state high court had no jurisdiction to restrain him from conducting disqualification proceedings. “There can’t be a protective order at this stage. When Rajasthan High Court extended time to reply on notices and said no directions will be passed, that was a protective order,”  he said

A bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra commenced hearing on Joshi’s plea that referred to a famous top court verdict rendered in the 1992 Kihoto Hollohan case, in which it was held that courts can’t intervene in disqualification proceedings undertaken by the Speaker under Tenth Schedule to the Constitution, according to PTI.

Sibal’s response came when the bench asked him whether courts could not intervene at all if the Speaker suspended or disqualified a lawmaker.

The hearing on the plea is underway.