New Delhi: In a major setback to BJP MLC A.H. Vishwanath, the Supreme Court (SC) today upheld the Karnataka High Court’s (HC) order of barring Vishwanath from becoming a Minister as he is a nominated member of the State Legislative Council. With this, Vishwanath’s hopes of becoming the Minister have been dashed.

The miffed MLC had filed a petition in the Apex Court challenging the HC order. When the case came up for hearing this morning, the Judges observed that the petitioner cannot become a Minister as he was nominated to the State Legislative Council under literature quota whereas R. Shankar and MTB Nagaraj can get berths as their disqualification ceased to be operative once they got elected to the Council from the Legislative Assembly.