RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, May 9: Jharkhand assembly speaker Rabindra Nath Mahto on Monday reserved his judgment on the petitions challenging the legislator status of BJP legislator party chief and first chief minister of Jharkhand Babulal Marandi.
Notably, Mahagama MLA Deepika Pandey Singh, Poraiyahat MLA Pradeep Yadav and former Mandar MLA Bandhu Tirkey had filed the petitions in January 2021.
They questioned the legislator status of Marandi saying how come he remained MLA when joined BJP after winning the election as a JVM candidate. Through the petition, they also submitted that Pradeep Yadav and Bandhu Tirkey, who were also declared elected as JVM candidates, are not with Marandi and thus Marandi joining BJP after the defection of his party is not valid.
On this, Marandi’s advocate RN Sahay submitted before the speaker’s tribunal that the petition ought to be dismissed as it was filed almost 10 months after JVM got merged with BJP and almost nine months after the Election Commission of India declared the merger legal and proper.
Sahay said Yadav and Tirkey were terminated from the party before the merger and he is not supposed to say anything in the matter.
“On February 6, Tirkey and Yadav were expelled from the party. On February 11, 2020, JVM merged with BJP. On 6 March, the Election Commission upheld the merger after a proper enquiry with its counterpart in Jharkhand. After 10 months of the development, a petition was filed under the anti-defection law. This should be outrightly rejected,” Sahay submitted.
Earlier on May 6, the assembly speaker had completed a hearing on the petitions of Raj Kumar Yadav and Bhusan Tirkey on the same matter and had reserved the judgement. The judgement has not been delivered so far.
