Six former Congress MLAs withdraw plea from SC against disqualification from Himachal Assembly

New Delhi: Six former Congress MLAs on Friday withdrew their pleas from the Supreme Court against the Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker's decision to disqualify them from the membership of their legislative assembly.

Senior advocate, Abhinav Mukherjee, appearing for the former MLAs, submitted before a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta that they wanted to withdraw their petitions.

"We knew this was going to happen due to the elections," the bench said, allowing the plea by the counsel.

The court had earlier refused to stay the disqualification of these six rebel Congress MLAs, challenging the State Assembly Speaker, Kuldeep Singh Pathania's decision to disqualify them, under Tenth Schedule for cross voting in the Rajya Sabha elections.

In their plea, the MLAs had contended it is one of the rare cases where they have been disqualified within 18 hours.

Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania had on February 29, 2024 disqualified six MLAs for defying the party whip in not voting for A M Singhvi, a candidate set up by Congress party.

The six MLAs — Rajinder Singh Rana, Sudhir Sharma, Chaitanya Sharma, Ravi Thakur, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, and Davinder Bhutto — had cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha election in favour of BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan, who won by draw of lots after a tie of 34 votes each in the 68-member Assembly.

In their plea before the court, the disqualified MLAs questioned the decision for having not been given sufficient time to respond to notice.