Ranchi: Jharkhand Assembly Speaker Rabindra Nath Mahto on Tuesday completed the hearing of a case pertaining to defection charges against senior BJP leader and former Chief Minister Babulal Marandi and reserved the judgment. Sources indicated that Marandi may lose his membersip of the Jharkhand Assembly. The tribunal headed by Assembly Speaker Mahato turned down the plea of Marandi's counsel to examine witnesses to prove that Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) was lawfully merged with the BJP under provisions laid down in the anti-defection law, according to these sources.
The charges had been filed against Marandi in December 2020 after he merged his Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) party with the saffron party in February that year in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah here and was unanimously elected the leader of BJP legislative party. The speaker had initiated proceedings under the ati-defection law suo moto. The complaints were filed by former CPI(ML) legislator, Rajkumar Yadav, JMM legislator Bhushan Tirkey, Congress legislator Dipika Pandey and former JVM(P) legislator Pradeep Yadav.
Marandi had merged JVM (P) with the BJP on February 17, 2020 after suspending his two party legislators, Pradeep Yadav and Bandhu Tirkey who later merged the party with Congress. BJP had sought the disqualification of Yadav and Tirkey, who was disqualified last month after being sentenced to three years in jail by a CBI court on corruption charges.
Tirkey in April was disqualified from Jharkhand Assembly under Representation of People Act, 1951, following a judgment by a CBI court. A special CBI court in Jharkhand, on March 28, had sentenced Tirkey, a former minister in the state government, to three years in jail in a corruption case. The court of Special Judicial Commissioner and CBI judge Prabhat Kumar Sharma also imposed a fine of Rs 3 lakh on Tirkey. Earlier Assembly Speaker Mahto in May had rejected BJP legislature party leader Babulal Marandi's plea to dismiss defection charges against him and cancel proceedings under the anti-defection law on the ground that they were filed late.
Marandi's counsel R N Sahay had earlier said that the petitions against Marandi were not maintainable as they were filed 10 months after the merger of the JVM-P with the saffron party and the petitions should be dismissed. Even in the Representation of People's Act there is a limitation of 45 days, he said.
In February this year a BJP delegation had approached Jharkhand Governor Ramesh Bais seeking his intervention in appointing Marandi as the leader of opposition in the 81-member state assembly.
The delegation led by party state president and parliamentarian Deepak Prakash had told the governor that the BJP legislative party leader Marandi, who was first chief minister of the tribal state, had not been accorded the status of leader of opposition even after two years.
He had alleged that the speaker had not taken a decision on appointing on this since the elections to the state assembly in November-December 2019 at the behest of the JMM-led government. After Marandi joined BJP its number in the assembly grew to 26. The ruling JMM-Congress-RJD has a combined strength of 49 in the House. (PTI)
