In a blow to the six Congress rebel MLAs from Himachal Pradesh, the Supreme Court on Monday not only refused to stay their disqualification by the State Assembly Speaker, but also denied them permission to participate and vote in the proceedings of the state Assembly.
The top court was hearing the plea of the six MLAs challenging the Speaker’s decision to disqualify them.
These MLAs on February 27 had cross-voted in favour of the BJP’s Rajya Sabha candidate Harsh Mahajan and had abstained from voting on the state budget despite the whip was issued by the party.
The cross-voting rendered a shocking defeat to Congress candidate for Rajya Sabha Abhishek Manu Singhvi despite the party being in majority in the 68-member House.
The three independent MLAs, who initially promised their support to the Congress, tilted in favour of the BJP candidate.
It also led to political turmoil in the state with the threat to the Congress government of getting unseated.
However, Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania on February 29 ordered the disqualification of six rebel MLAs on a petition filed by Congress MLA and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Harshwardhan Chauhan under the Anti-Defection Law for defying the party whip and hence invited disqualification.
This comes two days after the Election Commission of India announced bye-elections in the Assembly Constituencies of six MLAs to be held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections on June 1 in Himachal Pradesh.
A bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta, however, has maintained that the matter will be decided before the date of filing of nominations.
Notices were also sent to the respondents Speaker and others in the matter.
The six rebel MLAs Rajinder Rana, Sudhir Sharma, Ravi Thakur, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Devinder Kumar Bhutto and Chetanya Sharma had approached the Supreme Court by filing a writ petition challenging their disqualification by the Speaker.