A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the declaration of Rajya Sabha election results till the disposal of a PIL pertaining to the disqualification of six BSP MLAs in Rajasthan.
The said MLAs were elected as members of the BSP and were later declared by the Rajasthan Vidhan Sabha Speaker as members of the Congress.
The petitioner’s counsel mentioned that this is a matter of grave urgency as it concerns the Rajya Sabha election which is due to be held on June 10 (tomorrow). The plea has been filed against the order of this morning’s Rajasthan High Court order. Please list this, the counsel asked the Apex Court.
The bench of Justices M.R. Shah and Aniruddha Bose asked the petitioner to mention the matter before the Chief Justice of India for the purpose of listing.
Ahead of the Rajya Sabha election 2022, the petitioner had written to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to revise the voter list to reinstate their original party position and to postpone the election till the said correction is made.
This representation was rejected by the ECI on the ground of lack of authority. Eventually, the petitioner filed a plea before the Apex Court seeking direction to the ECI to conduct biennial election on the basis of status of the six MLAs as BSP MLAs and not Congress legislators.
For voting in the Rajya Sabha Elections tomorrow, six MLAs of the BSP, who were elected to the State Assembly in December 2018, had informed the assembly Speaker that they have merged their party with the Congress. Accordingly, on 18.09.2019, the Speaker declared them Congress MLAs.
The petitioner had earlier filed an application under Article 226 before the Division Bench of the Rajasthan High Court to keep the votes cast by the six MLAs separately and not declare the results of the election till the disposal of the PIL, which was dismissed.