It made the matter public on May 6 and gave rebel MLAs a week to file a rebuttal.
New Delhi:
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to stay the Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker’s order to disqualify six Congress rebels who had cross-voted in the recent Lok Sabha polls in the state.
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta issued notice to the office of HP Parliament Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania and sought his Respond to this request within four weeks.
The judge said the rebel HP MPs will not be allowed to vote or participate in parliamentary proceedings pending a ruling on their request.
“On the issue of by-elections to the six vacant seats, we will have to examine whether the elections notified by the ECI should be suspended pending the plea,” the bench said.
It made the matter public on May 6 and gave rebel MLAs a week to file a rebuttal.
Nominations for the six vacant parliamentary seats will open on May 7.
Six rebels – Sudhir Sharma, Ravi Thakur, Rajinder Rana, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Chetanya Sharma and Devinder Kumar Bhutto – for defying the Congress whip by attending the House and voting for Himachalaya Erbang, was disqualified on February 29. State governments during cuts motions and budgets.
After the rebels were disqualified, the effective number of members of the House of Representatives was reduced from 68 to 62, while the number of MPs was reduced from 40 to 34.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
