Ahead of Friday’s Rajya Sabha polls, petition in SC seeks stay on Rajasthan results

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 9

On the eve of Rajya Sabha polls, a petition in the Supreme Court on Thursday challenged the Rajasthan High Court order refusing to stay the declaration of the results till a plea seeking disqualification of six MLAs in the state was decided.

“Speak to the Registry. We cannot list it like this,” a Vacation Bench led by Justice MR Shah told the petitioner’s counsel after he mentioned the matter seeking urgent listing.

The six MLAs in question – who were elected to the State Assembly in December 2018 on BSP tickets, later switched over to the Congress and the Assembly Speaker declared them as members of the Congress Legislature Party on September 18, 2019.

In 2020, a petition in the Rajasthan High Court challenged the Speaker's decision and sought disqualification of the six BSP MLAs for defecting to the Congress.

But it remained pending as the high court said it’s not inclined to entertain the interim prayer as the election process had already commenced.

Now, the petition before the top court has sought a direction to the Election Commission to consider the MLAs as those belonging to the BSP, instead of Congress, in the Rajya Sabha election scheduled to be held on Friday.

Contending that the Speaker's decision went against the provisions of the Constitution, the petition submitted that if the votes of the six MLAs were considered in the election, it would be against the principle of fair election.

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