JOIN USSC to consider plea to suspend membership of six Rajasthan BSP MLAs, who merged with Congress
The Supreme Court is to consider on Monday a plea to suspend the membership of six Rajasthan Assembly MLAs who got elected on BSP ticket and subsequently merged themselves with the ruling Congress party.
A bench of Justices Arun Mishra, B R Gavai and Krishna Murari would take up the petition by BJP MLA Madan Dilawar to stay the order of September 18, 2019, passed by Speaker C P Joshi allowing their merger.
He also sought a direction to restrain MLAs-- Lakhan Singh, Rajender Singh Guda, Deepchand Kishangadbas, Joginder Singh Avana, Sandeep Kumar and Vajib Ali -- from voting in Assembly session beginning August 14.
The six MLAs, for their part, have also moved the top court for transferring a plea by Dilawar from the High Court to the top court, as similar matters were pending here.
Petitioner Dilawar challenged the validity of the High Court's order of August 6, 2020. He claimed that HC had failed to appreciate that the Speaker straight away "illegally" accepted the request of six MLAs and allowed the so-called merger of their party, i.e. BSP, into the Congress, recognised it and ordered that now onwards these six MLAs will be treated as MLAs belonging to Indian National Congress.
"BSP which is a recognised national party has never merged with any at any given point of time. BSP is functioning even as a national party and its members who are elected either to the Parliament or various State Legislative Assemblies are functioning as members in their respective Houses belonging to the BSP," he pointed out.
There has been no act “overt or covert” which can even remotely suggest that BSP has merged with any other political party, he added.
The petitioner further contended that the Speaker had wrongly recorded that two-third of the legislators of any political party can merge their party into any other political party.
"This is a total misreading of the provisions of law. As per para four of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, the condition of two-third MLAs accepting merger is a second condition, not the first. The first is that the original political party of the legislatures who are claiming merger should have merged with another political party," he pointed out.
Moreover, the Speaker had no jurisdiction to record a finding of a so-called merger, without giving notice to the Bahujan Samaj Party and without holding an enquiry as to whether the BSP has actually merged in the Congress or not, he contended.