Not with BJP, will support Cong sans Rawat: Rebels tell HC

Nainital: The nine rebel Congress MLAs who challenged their disqualification by speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal told the Uttarakhand high court on Monday that they have "not joined the BJP" and that they continue to support the Congress and will support the party if it forms the government with "another chief minister".

The MLAs, whose rebellion triggered the Uttarakhand house collapse, added that they had "differentiated themselves" from the BJP when they signed the memo sent to governor K K Paul seeking division of votes.

They told justice U C Dhyani that they were not against the Congress and only wanted to "clean it up" as they felt that the regime under former chief minister Harish Rawat "did not show the party in a good light".
This is the first time after the crisis in Uttarakhand that the rebel MLAs have said in court that they are still with the Congress. Till now there had just been an avalanche of rumours and conjectures - with much of it being fed by the rebels themselves - on their "current status". While some of them said they had put their might behind the BJP's attempts to form a new government, others said they would start their own party.

Yet others said their fight was only with Rawat. The BJP had, meanwhile, said they have not just the support of these legislators "but a few others". The latest development might force another round of deliberations within both the Congress and the BJP.



Presenting the case of the nine disqualified MLAs, Supreme Court lawyer C A Sundaram said, “The speaker displayed an 'undue haste' in the case of the nine rebels. The speaker was more interested in 'meeting the deadline of March 28', the day of the floor test, and was partisan in deciding the case.” The counsel for the rebels argued that the speaker is looked upon as a ‘quasi-judicial’ body and his decision should not be ‘biased’.
Sundaram also asserted that the speaker's answer in his affidavit is "strange" in that it said the Appropriation Bill was passed with ‘voice vote’. “Without any division of vote, the Appropriation Bill was allowed. We wanted a division of vote but nothing as such happened. Voice of dissent is important in a democracy, and intra-party dissent is also important,” said Sundaram.

He went on to argue that if this continues, no member of the ruling party would be able to criticize the government. “Deserting a government or a leader/chief minister by a member of a ruling party does not amount to leaving the party or defection. Even under the 10th schedule, defection means deserting the party and not dissent,” argued Sundaram.
The hearing of the matter will continue on Tuesday as Kapil Sibal will argue the case on behalf of the speaker.
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