New Delhi: UP Chief Minister and BSP chief Mayawati got a boost on Tuesday when three of her party MPs were disqualified for defecting to the SP last year.
Speaker Somnath Chatterjee disqualified Bhalchandra Yadav (MP from Khalilabad), Ramakant Yadav (Azamgarh) and Mohammad Shahid Akhlaque and declared their seats in the House as vacant.
The BSP had filed a petition before the Speaker to disqualify the MPs on the ground that they had "voluntarily" given up their party membership and joined the SP in November and December 2006.
Chatterjee referred the BSP petitions to the Privileges Committee, which inquired into the complaint and gave its findings. Later Chatterjee himself heard the MPs.
This is third major disqualification by the Lok Sabha Speaker after the coming into force of the anti-defection law in 1985. The first instance was the disqualification of 8 MPs in 1991 by the then Speaker Rabi Ray of the members who had sided with the late Chandrashekhar who had split the Janata Dal and formed a government after the fall of the V P Singh government.
The issue, however, died as the House was soon after dissolved with the fall of the House Chandrasekhar government.
The next instance of disqualification was that of the then Speaker Shivraj V Patil of four MPs belonging to the Ajit Singh faction of Janata Dal, which had rescued the minority P V Narasimha Rao government in 1993.
The disqualification was challenged in the Delhi High Court. The petitions were filed by Rajesh Verma, Leader of BSP in Lok Sabha, who contended that the three MPs had incurred disqualification under the anti-defection law and demanded
that their seats be declared vacant.
After the Privileges Committee headed by Kishore Chandra gave its report, Chatterjee heard the MPs and Verma for four days from Dec 10 last year.
In three separate orders, the Speaker held that based on the case made out in the petition and materal produced by the petitioner and the reply given by the MPs in their affidavits and during personal hearings they "voluntarily gave up" their membership of the party on which they were elected.
He quoted extensively from the judgments of the Supreme Court in a number of cases and the reports submitted by the Privileges Committee in these matters.
Chatterjee upheld the contention of the leader of the BSP group, who had produced clippings from nearly a dozen prominent newspapers and also a video clip in one case, to prove that certain speeches and utterances were made by the three MPs after their suspension from BSP and in favour of SP, which amounted to their voluntarily giving up their membership of the BSP.
Comments
0 comment