SC directs to count quorum by including vacant seats

The Supreme Court on Thursday issued an order directing parliament to count the quorum of parliamentary sessions by including the vacant seats in the existing parliamentary constituencies, which was how it was being counted earlier as well.

The court's direction came in an interim order on a case filed by the Attorney General's Office seeking to quash the amendment made to the rules to count the total number of members of parliament.

Justice Dr. Azmiralda Zahir, who was held the majority opinion that was passed, said that until the amendments were made, the total number of members of the parliament was counted according to Article 71 of the Constitution and the legal number of seats is determined by Article 86 of the Constitution. Article 87 sets out the number votes required for the parliament to make decisions.

The order stated it has been several years since the Constitution came into force and the quorum of the daily sittings of Parliament is based on those provisions of the Constitution.

The order said that while the state claims that the amendments to the Rules of Parliament are in violation of these provisions of the Constitution, the implementation of these provisions should be stayed.

".. This is because in cases where every session of parliament is convened and decisions are made in accordance with article 86 and 87 of the Constitution, since circumstances that question this situation has been presented, until the matter is settled it believed the parliament should proceed as they have been,” the ruling said.

"This is a situation where an interim order has to be passed in the interest of the public."

The total number of members of parliament is not defined in the Constitution as a set number. There is a rule under Article 71 of the Constitution to determine the total number of members. The total number of members currently in the parliament, as set by this rule, is 87. Article 71 of the Constitution says that every administrative constituency shall have two members for the first 5,000 or 5,000 members of the registered population. If the registered population of an administrative constituency exceeds 5,000, then a member should be there for every additional 5,000 people in the population.

Therefore, the total number of members in each parliament is determined based on these administrative areas and population. That is the only way to count the total number of members mentioned in the Constitution.

However, MP for Ihavandhoo constituency Mohamed Shifau proposed to count the number of members according to a different rule for the remaining term of the parliament. This is because seven seats are currently vacant as parliamentarians had been appointed as cabinet members of the current administration. With this, the total strength of the current session of parliament has come down from 87 to 80.

At present, the total number of parliament is being counted at 80.

The constitution states that most decisions taken by parliament will be passed either by the majority of the members who vote or by the majority of the members who attended the session. However, the legal number or quorum of a sitting is only 25 per cent of the total number of members. Thus, the quorum of the parliament is also strongly related to the total number of members.

The Constitution lists six important points that need to be decided based on the total number of members of parliament. This is mandatory for a certain percentage of the total number of members to be passed, but these are not passed by the majority of the members present in the parliament.