Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh on Monday said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will move court if the seven former party MPs are not disqualified under the anti-defection law.
Seven of 10 AAP Rajya Sabha MPs, including Raghav Chadha, Swati Malwal, Sandeep Pathak, Ashok Mittal, Rajendra Gupta, Vikramjit Sahney and Harbhajan Singh, quit the party last week and announced their merger with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Rajya Sabha Chairman CP Radhakrishnan officially accepted the merger of seven Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MPs with the BJP on Monday, reducing the strength of Arvind Kejriwal’s party in the Upper House to three.
Reacting to the Chairman’s decision, Singh said the seven MPs had submitted a letter seeking recognition of their merger with the BJP
He alleged that the objections raised by the AAP and its demand for their disqualification under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution had not been considered.
“The Chairman has taken cognisance of the letter submitted by those seven MPs and based on that, accepted their merger. The objection raised by us and the disqualification we sought under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution have not even been considered,” Singh was quoted by PTI as saying.
Meanwhile, Singh told ANI, “This decision of the Rajya Sabha Chairman is based on the letter from the 7 MPs to merge with the BJP. But when the Chairman will take congnisance of my letter, which states that the membership of these MPs should be suspended, I hope he will give his decision to protect the Constitution and democracy. We will talk more after the Chairman’s decision.”
‘We’ll approach the court’
Singh said the party was hopeful that once its letter is examined, the Chairman would act in favour of the Constitution and democracy by disqualifying the seven members.
“If that does not happen, we will approach the court. It is wrong to break a party in this manner,” he said.
Singh had written to the Rajya Sabha Chairman on Sunday, seeking the disqualification of the seven members and arguing that their move violated the anti-defection provisions under the Constitution.
What did Sanjay Singh’s petition say?
Singh challenged the validity of the merger, citing the requirements in the Constitution. His petition challenged the “purported merger” under paragraph 4 of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution and sought the disqualification of the MPs under its paragraph 2(1)(a).
Paragraph 2 of the Tenth Schedule deals with disqualification on the ground of defection.
Sub-paragraph (1) provides that, subject to the provisions of paragraphs 4 and 5, a member of a House belonging to any political party shall be disqualified from being a member of the House.
Clause (a) of this sub-paragraph further specifies that such disqualification occurs if the member has voluntarily given up membership of that political party.
However, as per the Tenth Schedule, a disqualification of MPs cannot take place in case an original political party merges with another political party, given that the merger includes two-thirds of the members.
The seven AAP MPs fulfilled this condition as they shook hands with the BJP.
How numbers stack up for BJP and AAP in Rajya Sabha?
After losing two-thirds of its MPs, the AAP’s strength in the Rajya Sabha has been reduced from 10 of three members.
Meanwhile, the BJP’s strength in the Rajya Sabha has increased to 113 after Chairman CP Radhakrishnan approved the merger of Raghav Chadha and six other MPs who quit the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
