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Delhi High reinstates membership of AAP’s 20 MLAs

Marking his reaction on the order issued by the Delhi High Court, Saurabh Bharadwaj, MLA of AAP stated, “MLAs were not given a chance to put their point, so now the court has given them a chance to do that.

In a move that spelt big relief for the Aam Aadmi Party led by Arvind Kejriwal, the Delhi High Court today reinstated the membership of the party’s 20 MLAs. Earlier their membership had been disqualified by the Election Commission and as a matter of fact, a presidential notification was issued as well. However, the High Court’s order seems to be only spelling relief for the AAP. According to the reports, the high court stated that the MLAs’ disqualification was bad in law.

More so, the court has asked the Election Commission to start a fresh hearing of the office of profit case against the MLAs.

Marking his reaction on the order issued by the Delhi High Court, Saurabh Bharadwaj, MLA of AAP stated, “MLAs were not given a chance to put their point, so now the court has given them a chance to do that. The EC will hear their plea again.”

As per ANI, the Delhi High Court stated that the violation of the norms of the oral hearing by the Election Commission and failure in conveying that O P Rawat, after recusing, had joined in the proceedings again, were the actual reasons to quell the order that was made on January 19.

It was on 19 January that the Election Commission had recommended to Ramnath Kovind, president of India to disqualify the memberships of 20 AAP MLAs for the reason of holding the office of profit. The EC, in its opinion that it had sent to the president’s office stated that by occupying the post of parliamentary secretaries between the period of 13 March 2015 and 8 September 2016, they are holding the office of profit and are accountable to be disqualified as legislators.

The MLAs of whom the membership has been restored include Alka Lamba (Chandni Chowk), Avtar Singh (Kalkaji), Adarsh Shastri (Dwarka), Anil Bajpai (Gandhi Nagar), Manoj Kumar (Kondli), Naresh Yadav (Mehrauli), Nitin Tyagi (Laxmi Nagar), Praveen Kumar (Jangpura) Kailash Gahlot (Najafgarh) – who is also a minister – Madan Lal (Kasturba Nagar).

The petition was filed against a total of 21 MLAs but since Jarnail Singh of Tilak Nagar had resigned from the constituency to fight the assembly elections of Punjab, the number came down to 20.

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