Six Ex-Congress MLAs Withdraw Plea Challenging Disqualification from Himachal Pradesh Assembly

Six former Congress MLAs in Himachal Pradesh withdrew their Supreme Court plea challenging their disqualification for defying a party whip and voting against the government. The MLAs are now contesting as BJP candidates in upcoming by-elections necessitated by their disqualification. The Supreme Court had earlier refused to stay the disqualification order and sought a response from the Assembly Speaker.

Six former Congress MLAs Friday withdrew their plea from the Supreme Court against the Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker's decision to disqualify them from the House.

A bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta was told by senior advocate Abhinav Mukherjee, appearing for the former MLAs, that they want to withdraw the petition.

''We knew this was going to happen due to the elections,'' the bench observed while allowing them to withdraw their plea.

The six former MLAs are now contesting as the BJP candidates the assembly bypolls which were necessitated after their disqualification.

The six former Congress MLAs -- Sudhir Sharma, Ravi Thakur, Rajinder Rana, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Chetanya Sharma and Devinder Kumar Bhutto -- were disqualified on February 29, for defying a Congress whip to be present in the House and vote in favour of the Himachal Pradesh government during the cut motion and budget.

According to the notification issued on March 16 by the poll panel, assembly byelections are scheduled to be held in the Dharamshala, Sujanpur, Lahaul and Spiti, Barsar, Gagret and Kutlehar constituencies that fell vacant after the disqualification of the six lawmakers on June 1 alongwith with polling for the four Lok Sabha seats in the state.

On March 18, the top court had refused to stay the Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker's order disqualifying the former MLAs who had cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha polls in the state.

It had issued notice to the office of Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania and sought its response within four weeks on a plea by the former MLAs.

The top court had said pending adjudication of their plea, these disqualified MLAs will not be allowed to vote or participate in the proceedings of the assembly.

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

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)