The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed jailed Nationalist Congress Party leaders Nawab Malik and Anil Deshmukh to participate in the floor test in Maharashtra Assembly on June 30, reported Live Law.

Malik and Deshmukh have been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in two separate cases.

Malik, a minister in the state Cabinet, was arrested on February 23 in connection with a money-laundering case involving fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim and his aides.

Deshmukh, the former state home minister, has been booked in a case related to accusations made by former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh. The former police commissioner had written to Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray in March last year alleging that Deshmukh had asked some officers to extort Rs 100 crore every month from bars and restaurants in the city. He was arrested in November.

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On Wednesday, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and JB Pardiwala directed the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation to escort the two leaders to the Vidhan Sabha.

“When proceedings are over, applicants shall be brought back to judicial custody,” the court ruled, according to Live Law.

The development came just after the Supreme Court refused to stay a floor test called by Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari against the Uddhav Thackeray-led government.

A governor can call for a floor test if a government in power loses the confidence of the House. The chief minister is then asked to prove the majority in the Assembly.

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The Maharashtra government is currently in the middle of a political crisis that began when minister Eknath Shinde went to Surat with a group of rebel MLAs on June 21. He is now camping with them at a hotel in Guwahati.

The rebel MLAs want the Shiv Sena to break its alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress.