NEW DELHI: Ten former Lok Sabha MPs expelled from the House on December 23, 2005 after being caught in a sting operation in the cash-for-questions scandal have now petitioned Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi that their expulsion be revoked. They have also pleaded with senior leaders of several political parties that their case be considered favourably.

The matter rests there for now. With the Election Commission restrained by the Supreme Court from declaring the seats vacant and holding fresh elections — petitions by them in the apex court challenging their expulsion are to be heard by a Constitution Bench next month. The MPs have argued with party leaders that the constituencies they represent have gone unrepresented for the last eight months and this was unfair to the people of their constituencies.

While at the formal level there is no forward movement on this issue, at the informal level the subject has been discussed by Mr. Dasmunsi with the leader of the House Pranab Mukherjee. Informally Mr. Dasmunsi and some others have let it be known that it would not be proper for Mr. Mukherjee to initiate any move for the revocation of their expulsion order since he was the person, as leader of the House, who moved the resolution in the Lok Sabha seeking their expulsion.

Congress Ministers have reportedly conveyed to the Opposition — the Bharatiya Janata Party suffered the biggest loss with 5 of the 10 expelled MPs belonging to it — that if the Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani desired, he should initiate such a move by writing to the Speaker Somnath Chatterjee

It was made clear that this stance of the Government by no means signalled that it was willing to consider revocation. For this would mean Parliament undoing what it had done. And two, with the Supreme Court still to consider the petitions by the expelled MPs, revocation by Parliament would send the "wrong signal" that the Lok Sabha was worried about what the apex court might do.

The expelled former Lok Sabha MPs are: Annasaheb Patil, Y.G. Mahajan, Pradeep Gandhi, Suresh Chandel and Chandra Pratap Singh (all BJP), Narendra Kumar Kushwaha, Lal Chadra Kol and Rajaram Pal (all Bahujan Samaj Party), Ramsevak Singh (Congress) and Manoj Kumar (Rashtriya Janata Dal). One BJP MP from the Rajya Sabha, Chhatrapal Singh Lodha, was also expelled after the same sting operation.

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