SC To Hear Plea Of Six Disqualified Himachal MLAs Against Their Disqualification On Tuesday

Himachal Pradesh Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania had disqualified the six on the Congress' plea for "defying" the party whip that required them to be present in the House and vote for the budget.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court will hear a plea by six rebel Congress MLAs, who had voted for the BJP in the recent Rajya Sabha polls in Himachal Pradesh, against their disqualification on Tuesday.

Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania had disqualified the six on the Congress' plea for "defying" the party whip that required them to be present in the House and vote for the budget.

The disqualified MLAs are Rajinder Rana, Sudhir Sharma, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Devinder Kumar Bhutoo, Ravi Thakur and Chetanya Sharma.

An SC bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna, Dipankar Datta and Prashant Kumar Mishra will hear on Tuesday (March 12 the) plea against the February 29 decision of the Speaker.

The rebel MLAs in their plea before the top court have made Pathania as well as state Parliamentary Affairs Minister Harsh Vardhan Chauhan a party.

The Congress rebels, who voted in favour of BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan in the Rajya Sabha polls on February 27, later "abstained" from voting on the Budget. Congress candidate Abhishek Singhvi lost the Rajya Sabha election due to the cross-voting. 

Following their disqualification, the strength of the house has gone down from 68 to 62, while the number of Congress MLAs has shrunk from 40 to 34.

The rebel MLAs, in their plea, have alleged violation of the principle of natural justice, claiming they did not get adequate opportunity to respond to the disqualification petition.

While the Speaker said the rebel MLAs attracted disqualification under the anti-defection law as they defied the party whip. He ruled that they ceased to be members of the House with immediate effect.

However, senior advocate Satya Pal Jain, who appeared for the rebel Congress MLAs, had argued that they were only given the show-cause notice and neither the copy of the petition nor the annexure was supplied. Jain had said seven days were mandatorily allowed for replying to the notice but no time was given to them.

Under the anti-defection law, any elected member who gives up the membership of a political party voluntarily or votes or abstains from voting in the House, contrary to any direction issued by his political party, is liable for disqualification.