The Supreme Court on Tuesday observed that the resolution passed by the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly suspending 12 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs, is prima facie "unconstitutional" as such a suspension cannot operate beyond six months owing to a constitutional bar. A Bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and CT Ravikumar said explicit outer limit as per the Constitution for an MLA to be absent from his seat is 60 days, after which the seat is deemed to be vacated.

"How long can seat remain vacant? At the most six months outer limit can be there. Here we are talking about a constituency being represented in a parliamentary form of democracy? Is this not hitting the basic structure of the constitution when the 12 constituencies are unrepresented?" asked the Bench. "We can say that the decision to suspension can only operate till 6 months and later than that it will be hit by constitutional bar," it added.