Lucknow, June 10
UP Vidhan Sabha Speaker Mata Prasad Pandey today disqualified the five defiant MLAs who had voluntarily crossed over to their parent party, BSP, a day after the Allahabad High Court judgment of February 28 setting aside the merger of the break away group into the ruling Samajwadi party.
Giving a shot in the arm to the ruling party the Speaker in a hastily convened Press conference declared that the five MLAs — Jaiveer Singh, Surendra Vikram, Singh, Dharampal, Ram Krishna and Ramji Shukla — had been disqualified under the provisions of the Tenth Schedule.
His 36-page judgment traces the sequence of events and claims that as the Loktantrik Bahujan Dal (the breakaway BSP group) had come into existence on August 26, 2003, these five legislators had defied the party whip when they announced that they were returning to the Bahujan Samaj Party.
According to the Speaker, the chief whip of the Loktantrik Bahujan Dal (LBD), Mr Yogesh Pratap Singh, had filed a petition before him seeking disqualification of these five MLAs on the ground that they had voluntarily given up the membership of the LBD and had even defied the party whip during the Rajya Sabha elections.
However, Raghvendra P Singh, lawyer for the MLAs, pointed out that there was no existence of the LBD after it had merged with the Samajwadi Party. As such there was no question of the five violating the anti-defection law.
As a matter of fact the MLAs had moved the Supreme Court after the petition had been filed before the Speaker. Refusing to take cognizance the apex Court had refused to stay the hearing before the Speaker.
It had maintained that as an appeal against the High Court order was pending before it, the issue of disqualification would be comprehensively decided after the dispute on the entire lot of 40 MLAs was disposed off.
Speaking to the Press one of the MLAs Jaiveer Singh today declared that the decision of the Speaker was aimed at protection the interests of the Samajwadi Party. He informed that he and his colleagues would seek legal opinion and then appeal against it in the appropriate court.
