Speaker disqualifies third BSP MLA

He disqualified MLA Bhagwan Sharma alias Guddu Pandit from Debai constituency in Bulandshahr under the anti-defection law. Sharma had joined the Samajwadi Party on August 6. Sharma has been disqualified with effect from August 6 under the tenth schedule of the Constitution.

BSP state president Swami Prasad Maurya had moved the petition with the Speaker seeking disqualification of Sharma.

“The application given by BSP state president Swami Prasad Maurya has been accepted and Bhagwan Sharma,MLA from Debai,has been disqualified from the state assembly from August 6,” Speaker Sukhdeo Rajbhar told reporters here in Lucknow.

Sharma,who had a controversial past,joined the SP in the presence of SP state president Akhilesh Yadav along with two BJP MLAs — Yashwant Singh Chauhan and Rajendra Singh. Since 2007,he has been booked in several cases including that of an alleged rape of a research scholar in Agra University and a case of abduction of block committee members during panchayat polls.

Speaker informed that while Sharma is the third MLA to be disqualified in the current assembly,there are two more petitions of disqualification that are pending with him. These relate to disqualification of BSP MLAs Krishna Kumar alias Satish Verma of Hardoi,who had joined SP and Jitendra Kumar Singh alias Babloo,who had allegedly joined the Peace Party.

Earlier,the Speaker had disqualified two BSP MLAs – Fareed Mahfooz Quidwai from Massauli and Sher Bahadur from Jalalabad constituency.