Dinesh Pratap Singh.
The Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council Chairman Ramesh Yadav on Monday rejected the Congress’s application, seeking the disqualification of MLC Dinesh Pratap Singh from the Upper House. He said the application was not “posharniya” (sustainable) under the anti-defection laws.
As a BJP candidate, Dinesh Singh had unsuccessfully contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election against then UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi from Rae Bareli. Earlier in the Congress, he was elected to the Upper House in 2016. He was suspended by the Congress in 2017.
The application was moved by Congress MLC Deepak Singh as the party’s “chief whip” in the Legislative Council in May 2018 after Dinesh shared a dais with then BJP national president Amit Shah.
“We will approach the court tomorrow as there was a clear ground to cancel his membership. He had said that he gave up the Congress membership. He not only stood on the dais with then BJP national president Amit Shah but later contested an election on the BJP symbol from Rae Bareli,” Deepak Singh told The Indian Express.
“The membership of Naseemuddin Siddiqui was recently rejected, but a different approach has been shown towards our application,” he said.
Congress leader Naseemuddin Siddiqui recently lost membership of the Upper House after the BSP moved a petition in the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court.
According to sources, Dinesh, in his reply to the disqualification application, argued that Deepak cannot be considered the “chief whip” as he was the only Congress MLC. He further contended that newspaper clippings, which were part of the Congress application, cannot determine whether he attended the Shah meeting and that Deepak was not present at the event to substantiate his claim.
Dinesh has reportedly mentioned that he was suspended by the Congress, and therefore, the clause of having left the party on his own was untenable.