Chandigarh, Dec 9 (IANS) Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) president Kuldip Bishnoi Wednesday sought that five legislators who ‘defected’ from his party and joined the ruling Congress should be disqualified and thereby unseated from the state assembly.
Bishnoi submitted petitions to Speaker Harmohinder Singh Chatha at the Haryana assembly here. Since Chatha was not in his office, Bishnoi spoke to him on phone and was told to leave the petitions with the speaker’s office here.

Bishnoi was accompanied by former Chandigarh MP and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Satya Pal Jain, who is also a lawyer.

Bishnoi sought disqualification of the five legislators on the ground that their defection from the HJC was in violation of the provisions of the Anti-Defection Act.

The HJC, which won six seats in the Oct 13 polls to the Haryana assembly, saw five of its newly-elected legislators walk into the Congress camp last month. Speaker Chatha immediately recognized them as Congress members.

The Congress had returned to the 90-member assembly with 40 seats, six short of a simple majority in the house. It roped in all seven Independent legislators and the lone Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) member to secure the numbers thatb earned it the majority in the legislature and returned to power.

Bhupinder Singh Hooda became chief minister for a second term.

The five HJC legislators also then left their party and announced that they were joining the Congress.

Under the provisions of the anti-defection law, any one legislator quitting the party on whose ticket he/she has won the election and joining another is disqualified and unseated from the legislature.

However, if such legislators make up at least one-third of the party’s elected members, they do not attract the provisions.