LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh Assembly Speaker on Wednesday fixed May 8 for further hearing of a petition seeking disqualification of five erstwhile BSP MLAs, who had quit the parent party in 2003 but returned to it after the Allahabad High Court quashed the then Speaker's decision to recognise the merger of the rebel group with the Samajwadi Party.

Speaker Mata Prasad Pandey deferred the matter till May 8 after counsels of the five MLAs sought adjournment of the proceedings on various grounds.

Earlier, on the request of one of the legislators Ram Krishna, the Speaker directed that the Hindi translation of the petition be made available to them.

Counsels for the five MLAs had on Tuesday questioned the legal existence of the breakaway group, Loktantrik Bahujan Dal, whose Chief Whip Yogesh Pratap Singh had filed the petition seeking their disqualification for violating the whip during the recent Rajya Sabha biennial polls in the State.

As many as 38 BSP MLAs had quit their parent party and floated a separate outfit LBD before merging it with the SP in 2003. The then Speaker, Kesri Nath Tripathi, had recognised the split and the subsequent merger.

Recently, the High Court had quashed the Speaker's decision and currently a petition challenging the High Court decision was pending in the Supreme Court. PTI

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