Hyderabad, Dec 21: A city court Friday issued a non-bailable warrant (NBW) against senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh for not appearing before it in connection with a defamation case filed against him by the AIMIM.
The Eighth Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Padmavathi issued the non-bailable warrant and posted the matter to January 3 for further hearing.
AIMIM leader S A Hussain Anwar had filed a petition against the Congress leader in August 2016 alleging that he had defamed AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi, saying the Hyderabad MP's party was contesting elections in other states for the sake of making money.
Later, speaking to reporters, the counsel for the petitioner, Mohammed Asif Amjad said they had issued notice to both Singh and the Editor of a Urdu daily, which carried the article, seeking apology and subsequently moved the court as they failed to respond.
Singh failed to appear before the court and also did not file any petition seeking exemption from appearance, forcing the judge to issue a non-bailable warrant against him, the counsel said.
However, the Editor of the newspaper had filed a petition seeking exemption from personal appearance, he added.
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Bhubaneswar (PTI): The Biju Janata Dal on Saturday suspended six of its MLAs for cross-voting during the recent election to four Rajya Sabha seats from Odisha.
The suspended legislators were Chakramani Kanhar of Baliguda seat, Naba Kishor Mallick of Jayadev constituency, Souvic Biswal of Choudwar-Cuttack, Subasini Jena of Basta, Ramakanta Bhoi of Tirtol and Devi Ranjan Tripathy of Banki, an order by party chief Naveen Patnaik showed.
The suspension decision was taken at the opposition party's Political Affairs Committee (PAC) meeting presided over by Patnaik.
The six MLAs were issued a show-cause notice on March 17.
They submitted their replies on Friday evening, and those were found not satisfactory, said the BJD's chief whip in the Assembly, Pramila Mallik.
The ruling BJP won two of the four Rajya Sabha seats while the opposition BJD and a saffron party-backed Independent candidate bagged one seat each in the biennial polls held last Monday.
While the total number of BJP legislators and Independent MLAs supporting the ruling party was 82 in the 147-member House, the saffron party candidates secured 93 first preference votes, which was 11 more than its strength in the Assembly.
Of these 11 votes, eight were of BJD MLAs and three of Congress legislators, an official had said.
