The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has said that it is confident of numbers stacking on their side when floor test is conducted in Madhya Pradesh. The party moved Supreme Court on Monday after Madhya Pradesh Speaker NP Prajapati abruptly ended the session of the Assembly for 10 days, thereby deferring the trust vote.
The Supreme Court will hear the BJP’s plea today which seeks direction from the top court to Kamal Nath government to hold trust vote.
The BJP leaders cited the judicial intervention in Karnataka in 2019 where the apex court allowed disqualified MLAs to contest by-polls to work out in the BJP’s favour should there be a by-election.
“In Karnataka the Supreme Court upheld the disqualification of 17 rebel MLAs but struck down the provision to bar them from contesting elections for six years (till 2023). If that scenario plays out here, it benefits the BJP,” said a senior party leader.
In Karnataka, when Speaker KR Ramesh had not accepted the resignations of 10 Congress and three JD(S) lawmakers, the legislators had moved Supreme Court seeking direction to the Speaker to decide on their resignations.
While the apex court asked the Speaker to take a call on the resignation within the time period set by him, it also ruled that the rebel MLAs ought not to participate in the proceedings of the House. After being disqualified they were permitted by the Supreme Court to contest the by-election
A senior BJP leader said the party also stands to gain if the resignation of MLAs is accepted because then it will be the single largest party in the assembly.
The BJP so far has 109 MLAs in the 228-member Assembly and needs only 104 MLAs to form government if the resignations of 22 MLAs are accepted.
“There is a third possibility that if the MLAs are disqualified and they seek the court’s protection and their disqualification is stayed they will be able to vote in the March 26 Rajya Sabha polls against the Congress whip, which again benefits the BJP,” the leader quoted above said.
The BJP has nominated two candidates – Jyotiraditya Scindia and Sumer Singh Solanki – as candidates for the Upper House from Madhya Pradesh where elections to fill three Rajya Sabha seats will be held on March 26.
The Kamal Nath government in Madhya Pradesh has been cobbling numbers to stay in power after 22 Congress MLAs resigned from the party.
Even as the Congress described the demand for floor test as unconstitutional and undemocratic in view of the fact that some of its MLAs were being held in captivity, a second BJP leader said the party is following all legal provisions to ensure there are no slip-ups.
“We are confident of overcoming all technical hurdles to form a government soon. The speaker cannot persuade the MLAs to work for a party that they don’t want to,” the second leader said.
The leadership at the Centre has also thrown its weight behind former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Amid reports that a section of BJP leaders in the state want a new face as chief minister, should the party come back to power, leaders in Delhi said a change is unlikely because they need a “bankable” leader to ensure that the party does not lose the chance to form government should a by-poll be necessitated.
“There are many similarities between what happened in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. In Karnataka, BS Yeddyurappa led the by-election in which a bunch of rebel MLAs won. The Karnataka by-election also bucked the trend of rebel candidates failing to win elections, a phenomenon that we saw in Gujarat,” said a third functionary.
During the 2017 Gujarat Assembly election, five of the seven MLAs who joined the BJP from the Congress had lost the election.
