UP Vidhan Sabha speaker dismisses pleas to disqualify two Cong MLAs

The Congress party had petitioned the Speaker seeking disqualification of its Rae Bareli MLA Aditi Singh and Harchandpur MLA Rakesh Singh. Aditi Singh was served a show-cause notice after she defied the party whip and attended the special session of the Vidhan Sabha on October 2 last year.

In a major relief to rebel Congress MLAs Aditi Singh and Rakesh Singh, Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly Speaker Hriday Narain Dixit on Monday rejected their party's pleas to disqualify them. The speaker dismissed the petitions against both the lawmakers saying they "lacked substance", a Vidhan Sabha spokesperson said. The Congress party had petitioned the Speaker seeking disqualification of its Rae Bareli MLA Aditi Singh and Harchandpur MLA Rakesh Singh.

Aditi Singh was served a show-cause notice after she defied the party whip and attended the special session of the Vidhan Sabha on October 2 last year. She had not responded to the notice. She was sent a reminder for her reply but she refrained from responding to it after which the party had filed the disqualification petition. Rakesh Singh and Aditi Singh, Congress MLAs from Harchandpur and Sadar respectively in Rae Bareli, won the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly election on Congress tickets. In the case of Rakesh Singh, the Congress leader in UP Assembly, Aradhana Misra, had alleged that he worked against the party during the 2019 general elections by working for the BJP candidate from Rae Bareli from where Congress president Sonia Gandhi was contesting. Misra has also filed separate applications in a Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court and the bench of justices Dinesh Kumar Singh and Pankaj Kumar Jaiswal had listed the matter on July 14 with a direction to serve notices to the MLAs using email and WhatsApp.

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