The Congress today filed the last batch of petitions seeking disqualification of Charles Pyngrope and Shitlang Pala who along with ten other MLAs deserted the Congress to join the Trinamool Congress.
The petitions were filed by Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Ampareen Lyngdoh before Assembly Speaker Metbah Lyngdoh.
Speaking to media persons after filing the disqualification petitions, Ampareen said, “We are very confident that our petitions stand while interpreting the Tenth Schedule to the Constitution of India.”
It may be mentioned that Pyngrope who is the MLA from Nongthymmai constituency was recently appointed as State president of Trinamool Congress. Pala on the other hand is the MLA from Sutnga-Saipung constituency.
According to Ampareen, the last two petitions have been duly modified to include more areas which would become more effective in a show cause notice scenario.
She also said that there has been a lapse in the exit of the twelve Congress MLAs to the Trinamool Congress since sub para 2 of para 4 of the Tenth Schedule clearly indicates that defection would only become effective if those who defect form a new party and then merge with another political party.
“Another area which we feel requires attention is that there was no resignation, no discussion, and no dialogue by the defecting MLAs with the parent party. We are trying our best to present our case on merit,” Ampareen said.
“We hope the arguments and the points put forward by us would be taken into serious consideration and yield a positive result,” she added.
It may be recalled that on December 8, former Chief Minister Mukul Sangma along with nine other legislators had submitted their replies to the Speaker on the disqualification petitions filed by Ampareen against them.
Ampareen also refused to react to the allegations by Dr. Sangma that the Congress was attempting to distort the facts by filing disqualifications petitions against only ten of the twelve defecting MLAs.
“Those are baseless and nonsensical comments. We don’t want to react to such baseless comments,” she said.
