New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed a
Punjab and Haryana High Court order disqualifying five state
MLAs of Haryana Janhit Congress for joining the ruling
Congress party and the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government.
A bench of justices Altamas Kabir and S S Nijjar stayed
the December 20, 2011 judgement of the high court on a Special
Leave Petition (SLP) filed by the Haryana assembly speaker and
some of the aggrieved MLAs, questioning the verdict.
Attorney General G E Vahanvati, appearing for the state
assembly speaker, submitted that the high court's direction
"ex facie suffer some lack of jurisdiction and non application
of mind to the settled law."
The AG also urged the apex court to expunge the
strictures passed by the high court against the speaker.
The apex court while staying the direction sought the
stands of the Election Commission of India and Haryana Janhit
Congress (HJC) leader Kuldeep Bishnoi on the SLP.
The high court had earlier ordered interim
disqualification of the MLAs and had quashed the order passed
by the speaker recognising HJC's merger with the ruling
Congress party.
The high court had passed the order on Bishnoi's
petition, questioning the Haryana assembly speaker's decision
to treat the alleged defection by five of his party MLAs as
merger of his entire party with the ruling Congress party.
PTI
First Published: Wednesday, January 04, 2012, 18:53