Rajya Sabha polls: Petition in Supreme Court seeks stay on Rajasthan results

New Delhi, June 10

A petition in the Supreme Court has 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.

The petition was mentioned for urgent listing on Friday before a Vacation Bench led by Justice MR Shah which said the court’s Registry has sent the matter to the Chief Justice of India and was awaiting communication from the CJI’s office.

“We have inquired from the Registry and the Registry said the matter is sent to the Chief Justice of India but they have not received any communication or response from the Chief Justice’s office,” Justice Shah told the petitioner’s counsel.

“We have no authority as observed earlier by another Bench also. Unless the Chief Justice grants permission, we cannot do anything,” he said, clarifying that the Bench had no difficulty in hearing the petition if the CJI gave permission for its listing.

As counsel said he had approached the mentioning registrar but the matter has not come up in the list today, the Bench said, “You wait. If the Chief Justice grants permission, we will take up the matter.”

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.