By IANS,
Chandigarh : Five legislators from the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) who had defected to the ruling Congress in 2009 Wednesday moved an application before the Haryana assembly speaker seeking dismissal of a petition filed against them by HJC president Kuldeep Bishnoi under the Anti-Defection Act.
In their application before Speaker Kuldeep Sharma, the five legislators said that Bishnoi had ceased to be a member of the assembly and his petition was no longer maintainable under the law.
The five defector legislators — Satpal Sangwan, Vinod Bhyana, Narender Singh, Zile Ram and Dharam Singh — joined the Congress November 2009 after claiming that they had “merged” the HJC with the Congress. Four of them were later inducted by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda as ministers and chief parliamentary secretaries.
All five legislators were elected to the state assembly October 2009 on the HJC ticket but defected to the Congress.
Bishnoi quit as legislator from the Adampur assembly seat following his election to the Lok Sabha from the Hisar parliamentary seat.
Bishnoi’s counsel and former MP Satya Pal Jain said Wednesday that the application moved by the defector legislators seeking dismissal of the petition against them showed that they were ignorant about the rules.
He said that anyone could petition under the Anti-Defection Law and he need not be a sitting legislator to do so.