The Supreme Court has ruled that the amendment brought to the Parliament Standing order revising how it counts the number of seats in the parliament is lawfully wrong.
Parliament majority MDP led the amendment to the Standing Order to exclude the seats whose MPs have resigned for different reasons when counting the total number of seats in the Parliament.
Several MPs gave up their parliamentary seats to take over Ministerial positions in the new government and Vice President Hussain Mohamed Latheef also resigned from his seat.
This prompted the Attorney General's Office to contest the revision at the top Court. However, following this, the Parliament moved to remove the revisions in question and include the changes in another article of the Parliament Standing Order.
The Supreme Court said today that the Parliament's decision to disregard the seats of the 7 members who resigned and count the seat as 80 instead of 87 goes against the Constitution.
It further said that since the Parliament has revoked the revision in question, there is nothing more that can be done on the issue.
The revision regarding the parliamentary count coincided with the opposition's talk about the parliamentary impeachment of the President and his Vice President. Under the Constitution, the President and the Vice President can only be impeached with the backing of one-third of the parliament. Lowering the number of counted seats would allow the opposition to impeach the President and Vice President with just their votes.
