The membership of two Jharkhand legislators, Jaiprakash Bhai Patel and Lobin Hembrom, has been annulled for defection. Speaker Rabindranath Mahto's Tribunal announced the decision on Thursday after examination of the complaints filed under the 10th Schedule of the Indian Constitution.
The revocation will come into effect from July 26. At the time, both Patel and Hembrom were members of the ruling coalition. Jaiprakash Bhai Patel, who earlier represented Mandu and was from the BJP, had joined the Congress on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections. He lost on Congress ticket from the Hazaribag seat.
Similarly, one Lobin Hembrom of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), who represented the constituency of Borio, fought against his party's candidate for the Rajmahal Lok Sabha seat and lost. While BJP filed a complaint against Patel, the JMM complained about Hembrom to the Speaker's Tribunal.
After two days of argument, the Tribunal decided to deliberate and asked for the transcript of the debate at noon on July 25. While arguing for the case against Patel, BJP's advocate Vinod Kumar Sahu told the court that he had defected to Congress from the BJP and joined from Hazaribag constituency, which the Election Commission had noted accordingly. Sahu had countered the requests for additional time and evidence by contentions that these were only delaying tactics and that Patel's case squarely fell under the anti-defection provisions of the 10th Schedule.
In the case of Hembrom, his counsel Anuj Kumar argued that the matter should be treated as an internal party problem and not as a case of defection. But JMM's counsel Ankitesh Kumar Jha continued to insist that by filing nomination for the Lok Sabha seat against the candidate of his party, Hembrom had indulged in anti-party activity amounting to a breach of party discipline for which his membership was liable to be terminated.
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