Six ex-Cong MLAs withdraw plea from Supreme Court against disqualification from HP Assembly
New Delhi, May 10: Six former Congress MLAs Friday withdrew their plea from the Supreme Court against the Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker's decision to disqualify them from the House.
A bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta was told by senior advocate Abhinav Mukherjee, appearing for the former MLAs, that they want to withdraw the petition.
"We knew this was going to happen due to the elections," the bench observed while allowing them to withdraw their plea.
The six former MLAs are now contesting as the BJP candidates the assembly bypolls which were necessitated after their disqualification.
The six former Congress MLAs -- Sudhir Sharma, Ravi Thakur, Rajinder Rana, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Chetanya Sharma and Devinder Kumar Bhutto -- were disqualified on February 29, for defying a Congress whip to be present in the House and vote in favour of the Himachal Pradesh government during the cut motion and budget.
According to the notification issued on March 16 by the poll panel, assembly byelections are scheduled to be held in the Dharamshala, Sujanpur, Lahaul and Spiti, Barsar, Gagret and Kutlehar constituencies that fell vacant after the disqualification of the six lawmakers on June 1 alongwith with polling for the four Lok Sabha seats in the state.
On March 18, the top court had refused to stay the Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker's order disqualifying the former MLAs who had cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha polls in the state.
It had issued notice to the office of Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania and sought its response within four weeks on a plea by the former MLAs.
The top court had said pending adjudication of their plea, these disqualified MLAs will not be allowed to vote or participate in the proceedings of the assembly.
Following the disqualification of the rebels, the effective strength of the House has gone down to 62 from 68, while the number of Congress MLAs has shrunk to 34 from 40.
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11 more bodies retrieved from Arunachal accident site
Itanagar (PTI): Eleven more bodies were retrieved on Saturday from the deep gorge in Arunachal Pradesh's Anjaw district, where a mini-truck on which 22 labourers from Assam were travelling fell, an official said.
With this, 17 bodies have been recovered from the accident site, Anjaw's deputy commissioner Milo Kojin said.
He said three more bodies will be brought out on Sunday.
The operation, being conducted by a joint team of the NDRF and Army, resumed at 6 am.
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"The retrieval process was extremely difficult because of the treacherous terrain, and the gorge is very deep," Kojin said.
The operation was suspended around 4 pm due to low visibility and will be resumed on Sunday morning, he said.
"One person is still missing, and a search operation will be carried out tomorrow," he added.
The accident happened on the evening of December 8, around 40 km from Hayuliang towards Chaglagam in the district. On the evening of December 10, one survivor managed to climb out of the gorge and reach a nearby Border Roads Task Force (BRTF) labour camp, following which the authorities were alerted.
Six bodies were recovered from the gorge on Friday and handed over to their families on Saturday.
