AM Singhvi appears in Supreme Court against six Himachal Congress MLAs whose cross-voting led to his loss

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to stay the Himachal Pradesh legislative assembly speaker's decision to disqualify six Congress MLAs who had voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate during the recent Rajya Sabha elections [Chaitanya Sharma and ors vs Speaker Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly and ors]..A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta sought the response of the office of the Himachal Pradesh speaker and the legislative assembly secretary in the matter and posted the case for further consideration in May.Senior Advocate Harish Salve appeared for the disqualified MLAs and sought to be heard on the plea for stay on the speaker's decision."We can issue notice but not stay," Justice Khanna remarked,Salve said the case would become infructuous by then since the bye-elections are set to take place soon.There is no question of the MLAs in question being allowed to take part in House proceedings in the interim, the bench orally remarked.Senior Advocate Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi appeared for the Himachal Pradesh speaker. Notably, Singhvi was the Congress candidate for the polls and the cross voting by the petitioner-MLAs had led to his loss. "Article 329 has kicked in. Court cannot normally stay election process and disqualification cannot be stated," Singhvi told the Court..The top court was hearing a plea by the six Congress legislators challenging the speaker's decision. .The MLAs - Chaitanya Sharma, Davinder Kumar (Bhutto), Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Rajinder Rana, Ravi Thakur and Sudhir Sharma - jointly moved the apex court against their removal from the legislative assembly by the speaker.The six MLAs were disqualified by the speaker on February 29 on a petition moved by the State Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Harshwardhan Chauhan.This was soon after their cross-voting led to defeat of the Congress candidate, Dr. Singhvi.Speaker Kuldeep Pathania disqualified the MLAs for having remained absent from the House despite the issuance of a whip by the party. The speaker had opined that in voting on critical matters like budget, elected MLAs of a party cannot be permitted to hide behind procedural technicalities such as proof of service of the whip.Thus, the speaker had ruled that the six MLAs incurred disqualification under the Tenth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.Interestingly, the speaker had said that cross voting in Rajya Sabha polls would not attract the anti-defection law under Tenth Schedule of the Constitution since a Supreme Court judgment lays down that anti-defection law will not apply to elections for Rajya Sabha seats.Hence, the disqualification order by the speaker was for failing to remain present in the House despite the whip, and not for cross-voting.The MLAs then moved the Supreme Court..Senior Counsel Maninder Singh appeared for the Election Commission of India today and informed the Court that the bye-elections have not been notified as yet, and orally said the same could be deferred if the instant case is admitted.Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal appeared for the Assembly Secretary and said that he too be allowed to reply to the plea. The bench then proceeded to issue notice in the matter.