Defecting Haryana legislators, speaker given 6 weeks to reply
By IANSWednesday, September 1, 2010
CHANDIGARH - The Punjab and Haryana High Court Wednesday granted six weeks of time to Haryana assembly speaker H.S. Chatha and five Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) legislators to file replies on a petition. The legislators had left their party and joined the ruling Congress in November.
Justice Permod Kohli of the high court asked them to file their replies within six weeks on a petition filed by HJC president Kuldeep Bishnoi seeking disqualification of the defecting legislators from the assembly.
The next date of the hearing has been fixed for Oct 14.
Bishnoi had filed five separate petitions before the Haryana assembly speaker seeking the disqualification of the defecting legislators in December.
He challenged the move of the legislators to merge their group with the Congress party by saying that this was done without the consent of the HJC president - who alone had the power to merge the party.
Bishnoi later moved the high court, levelling allegations of malafide against the speaker and alleged that Chatha was intentionally delaying the proceedings and during the last eight months he could not get even the replies filed by the five legislators. He said that the matter was being adjourned by Chatha on one pretext or the other.
He urged that in view of the conduct of the speaker, the high court should itself decide the case and declare these five legislators as disqualified from the assembly.
