Jharkhand Vikas Morcha supremo Babulal Marandi besides party’s principal general secretary Pradeep Yadav and vice president Saba Ahmed on Monday deposed before the Speaker’s court to record their statements in the MlAs’ defection case.
In his testimony before Speaker Dinesh Oraon, Marandi is learnt to have stressed that the six MlAs in question had contested and won on the JVM ticket and thereafter moved to the BJP. “The BJP also accepted them and all this happened soon after the poll results were out,” Marandi stated. Saba Ahmed, in his statement, recorded that all the legislators had participated in party’s executive body meeting which had never discussed any plan to merge JVM into BJP. “later, we got hints that six MlAs are in touch with the BJP and we subsequently issued show cause to them looking at their anti-party activities. I have stated about places where party meetings was held at that time and also showed examples from other states where in similar cases membership of defecting MlAs has been cancelled,” said Ahmed.
Pradeep Yadav also presented his case before the court and the leaders unanimously demanded to dispose the matter as soon as possible by hearing the case on day to day basis.
“There is delaying tactics from the other side and we sought for speedy trial. On which the Speaker referred to the standard practice in such matters. Their advocate questioned how the matter can run simultaneously in the High Court as well as here which we opposed,” said Yadav.
The Speaker directed the JVM leaders to sign their recorded reply when it would come in writing and did not give any date for next hearing. Six legislators- Naveen Jaiswal, Alok Chaurasia, Amar Kumar Bauri, Ganesh Ganjhu, Janki Prasad Yadav and Randheer Singh- out of eight formally won on JVM’s ticket had defected and joined the BJP in no time after the Assembly elections in 2015. Two of them went on becoming ministers in the BJP Government.