Chandigarh, Sep 7: A day after it announced its first list of 31 candidates for the Haryana Assembly polls, the Congress faced rebellion as party leader Rajesh Joon, whose candidature was ignored from Bahadurgarh, on Saturday quit the party and announced to fight as an independent.

The party has fielded sitting MLA Rajendra Singh Joon from the Bahadurgarh seat.

Rajesh was the ticket aspirant from the Bahadurgarh Assembly segment, which is in Jhajjar district.

"I will fight the election as an independent," Rajesh told reporters in Bahadurgarh.

He said that he took this decision after consulting his supporters, who asked him to contest the upcoming assembly polls.

Rajesh said that he would file his nomination papers on September 11, adding he has started his poll campaign for contesting the elections.

He said he was "cheated" as his candidature was ignored and claimed that he was "used and thrown".

Rajesh had unsuccessfully contested the Bahadurgarh Assembly segment as an independent candidate in the 2014 assembly polls. In the 2019 assembly polls, he withdrew his nomination papers in favour of Rajendra Joon.

The Congress on Friday released its first list of 31 candidates for the Haryana Assembly polls, fielding former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda from Garhi Sampla-Kiloi, state unit chief Udai Bhan from Hodal and wrestler Vinesh Phogat from Julana.

Of the 28 sitting MLAs which the party has in the present assembly, the Congress on Friday re-nominated 27 of them while it is yet to declare its Israna seat, from where it has a legislator.

In the 2019 assembly polls, the Congress had 31 MLAs, but later on party legislator Bhavya Bishnoi had joined the BJP and is a legislator from the ruling party.

Polling in Haryana will take place on October 5 while the counting of votes for the elections to the 90-member assembly will take place on October 8.

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New Delhi (PTI): The Supreme Court on Monday expressed surprise that the Jharkhand High Court has not pronounced verdicts in 67 criminal appeals after reserving judgement and asked all high courts to submit report in a month on cases where judgements are pending.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh termed the development as "disturbing", and said it will law down some mandatory guidelines on the issue.

"This cannot be allowed to happen," the bench said, as it sought reports from all the high courts in four weeks on cases where judgement has been reserved on or before January 31, 2025 but verdict has not been pronounced till date.

The top court passed the directions after perusing the report filed by registrar general of the Jharkhand High Court in which it said in 56 criminal appeals heard by division bench from January, 2022 till December, 2024, the verdict has not been pronounced despite order being reserved.

It also noted that before the single bench judge, judgement has not been pronounced in 11 criminal appeals despite order being reserved.

The top court was hearing a plea of four life convicts, who have approached through advocate Fauzia Shakil, claiming that the Jharkhand high court had reserved orders on their appeals against conviction in 2022 but did not pronounce verdicts due to which they were not able to claim the benefit of remission.