High court notice to Haryana’s defector legislators

CHANDIGARH - The Punjab and Haryana High Court Wednesday issued notice to five legislators of the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) who defected to the ruling Congress in the state last year.

Justice Permod Kohli issued notice to Haryana assembly Speaker H.S. Chatha and the five defector legislators — Satpal Sangwan, Vinod Bhayana, Narender Singh, Zile Ram and Dharam Singh. They have been asked to reply by Sep 1, the next date of hearing.

All five legislators were elected to the state assembly October last year on HJC ticket but defected to the Congress in November, leaving HJC president Kuldip Bishnoi as the lone HJC legislator in the house.

Their ‘merger’ of the HJC into the Congress was allowed by the assembly speaker. The notice by the high court was issued following a petition moved by Bishnoi against the merger.

Bishnoi has sought the disqualification of these five legislators from the assembly under the anti-defection law. Bishnoi alleged that the speaker was trying to shield the defector legislators.

Bishnoi said that the speaker allowed the merger of the group of defector HJC legislators into the Congress without giving any notice to the HJC president. He termed the merger as unconstitutional.

The HJC president claimed that Chatha was using delaying tactics on the petitions he filed before the speaker.

The ruling Congress led by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda could not manage simple majority in the 90-member assembly in the October assembly poll. It took the support of seven Independent legislators to come back to power.

Later, the HJC group of legislators merged with the Congress to take the Congress strength to a comfortable 45 seats in the 90-seat assembly.