Delhi High Court has refused to stay disqualification of 20 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs for the office of profit charges. It also stopped the Election Commission (EC) from taking steps like announcing by polls dates for seats of those 20 disqualified AAP legislators of Delhi Assembly, till next hearing scheduled on January 29. Further, the Delhi HC ordered EC to file a reply by February 6 on disqualification of MLAs. 8 out of the 20 MLAs had filed three petitions asking EC to recommend to the President to disqualify, and canceling the notification issued after President Ram Nath Kovind signed.
MLAs have said that the EC didn't give them a chance to defend themselves and requested the court to order the EC to hear their arguments. AAP revealed that the legislators didn't enjoy any salary or perks as parliamentary secretaries, who assisted ministers in their work and hence there is no doubting of them having held office of profit. The EC can now move to Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court's order, and this Disqualification means elections have to be held for that 20 Delhi seat, which will however not impact Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's government even if AAP is defeated in all 20 seats, since they enjoy huge majority of 66 of 70 assembly seats.
Of the 21 MLAs, Jarnail Singh has already resigned. The disqualified MLAs are Alka Lamba, Adarsh Shastri, Sanjeev Jha, Rajesh Gupta, Kailash Gehlot, Vijendra Garg, Praveen Kumar, Sharad Kumar, Madan Lal Khufiya, Shiv Charan Goyal, Sarita Singh, Naresh Yadav, Rajesh Rishi, Anil Kumar, Som Dutt, Avtar Singh, Sukhvir Singh Dala, Manoj Kumar and Nitin Tyagi.
