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3 BSP MPs disqualified

New Delhi: Speaker Somnath Chatterjee has disqualified three Bahujan Samaj Party members, elected to the 14th Lok Sabha, under the anti-defection law for supporting the Samajwadi Party (SP) led by Mulayam Singh.

The three seats in Uttar Pradesh have been held vacant, necessitating elections.Acting on complaints filed by Rajesh Verma, BSP leader in House, on April 2, 2007, the Speaker, in three separate orders passed on January 27, held that Bhalchandra Yadav (Khalilabad), Ramakant Yadav (Azamgarh) and Mohammad Shahid Akhlaque (Meerut) incurred disqualification on account of their voluntarily giving up BSP membership.

Initially on a reference from the Speaker, the Privileges Committee conducted a preliminary enquiry and submitted its report.

Thereafter, he personally heard the complainant and the three MPs for four days in December 2007.

The Speaker quoted extensively from Supreme Court judgments and also relied on the report of the Privileges Committee and newspaper clippings in holding that certain speeches/utterances made by the respondents after their suspension from the party — against the Bahujan Samaj Party and in favour of the SP — amounted to their voluntarily giving up membership of the BSP, to which they belonged at the time of election to the 14th Lok Sabha.

“The facts that so many newspapers have reported with near uniformity about the utterances/speeches by the respondents against the BSP and its leader Mayawati and in favour of the SP, and the lack of a plausible explanation from the respondents to the questions as to why all the newspapers would print a similar news report on the same day if the incident had not really happened and why no rejoinder was issued by the respondents if they felt that the said reports were untrue, apparently, have gone against the respondents”, the Speaker said.

Accepting the media reports as conclusive evidence in adjudication of cases under the anti-defection law, he said: “In a democracy like ours, the Press plays a very vital role, specially in disseminating information regarding different political parties and persons in public life, as the MPs are. In our country, there is complete freedom of the Press and in matters of political events, it is expected that reports about political events would be factual. … Ordinarily, in my view, in a democratic set-up like ours, the newspaper reports, though not strictly proved as per the law of evidence, can be taken as providing reliable circumstantial evidence, unless proved otherwise. …”

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