SACHIN Pilot, loyalist MLAs’ petition contesting Speaker’s disqualification, taken up by Rajasthan HC

The Rajasthan High Court on Thursday, July 16 accepted the amended plea filed by Sachin Pilot camp challenging the disqualification notices issued to MLAs by Rajasthan speaker. It will now be heard by the two-judge bench. Pilot sought some time to amend their plea and the court had deferred the hearing. Counsel Harish Salve had said that dissident MLAs want to challenge anti-defection law enshrined in the Tenth Schedule of Constitution. The Pilot camp has argued before the court that their absence at the CLP meetings cannot constitute defiance of the whip because whip applied only when the assembly is in session and the whip is issued on the floor of the house. The Pilot group has taken the battle to the court and would expect to pre-empt disqualification from the assembly by the Speaker. The 19 MLAs were sent notices on Tuesday by the Speaker after the Congress complained that the MLAs had defied a party whip to attend two Congress Legislature Party meetings. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala, who is part of the central team sent by the Congress to Jaipur to handle the crisis, had a meeting with the chief minister. It was conveyed to him that Rahul Gandhi wants to keep the doors open for Pilot. Even as the political crisis in the state deepens, the Rajasthan BJP unit is in “wait and watch” mode. Party leaders maintained that the BJP, as the main Opposition in Rajasthan, will take “every action to see that the Gehlot government fails to prove (its) majority” in the Assembly.