Rajasthan Congress drama: Speaker accepts withdrawal of MLAs’ resignations

As per an affidavit submitted with the High Court, Assembly Secretary Mahaveer Prasad Sharma has said that “letters of resignations of 81 MLAS out of which five were photo copies, were received by the Hon’ble Speaker which were presented by six MLAs. The petitioner is not correct in contending that there were 91 resignations.”

The affidavit has been filed in connection with a PIL filed by Deputy Leader of Opposition Rajendra Rathore, where Speaker of the Rajasthan Assembly, as well as Assembly Secretary, are respondents.

The official figure is slightly less than what was being propagated by the Gehlot camp since September.

Angry over the Congress high command’s “unilateral” decision to opt for a new chief minister of Rajasthan — said to have been Sachin Pilot — without consulting them, most Congress MLAs had skipped the CLP meeting and submitted their resignations to Joshi on September 25. Gehlot, at that time, was in the running for the post of Congress national president.

In his affidavit, Sharma has also said that “all the MLAs have appeared individually before the Hon’ble Speaker and submitted letter of withdrawal of their resignations.”

Citing Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business of Rajasthan Assembly, Sharma says that “before acceptance of resignation, a Member Legislative Assembly can withdraw his/her resignation. Since all the MLAs have withdrawn their resignations before their acceptance, the resignations became non-est in the eye of law.”

He says that since the “Speaker has rejected the resignations of the Members Legislative Assembly on 13.1.2023 hence, the present petition has become infructuous.”

Hearing the matter on Monday, a bench of Justices Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Chandra Kumar Songara has given Rathore three days to file a reply, and listed the matter for January 20.

In his PIL, filed in December, Rathore had argued that people of Rajasthan “are in a state of confusion whether presently they are governed by a government which is validly placed or not. The strength (of the Assembly) has come down to 109 since 91 MLAs have resigned. So what is the status of this government?”

The PIL sought a judicial intervention in the matter and a direction to the Speaker to take a decision on the resignations within seven working days.

The developments come ahead of the final budget session of the incumbent Gehlot government which begins from January 23.