Chandigarh: The Haryana Congress in-charge on Wednesday named the four party MLAs who voted in favour of two BJP candidates in election for the Rajya Sabha seats in Haryana and held that disciplinary action has been initiated against them. Addressing newspersons in New Delhi, Hariprasad said show-cause notices were being issued against the four Haryana Congress MLAs, namely Shaili Chaudhary, Mohammad Ilyas, Mohammad Israil and Renu Bala, who voted in favour of the BJP.Alleging that while the election process was influenced by money, muscle power and institutional pressure, the AICC general secretary, Hariprasad, added that several votes were deliberately declared invalid to alter the election outcome.He held that he along with party leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda, had reviewed ballot papers and found that four MLAs had voted in BJP’s favour
He referred to the 2016 Rajya Sabha election controversy when he alleged a similar pattern was used. It may be recalled that in 2016, R K Anand, who had numbers – as he was backed by both Congress and Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) – had lost when as many as 12 votes were declared invalid.
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CONG SUBVERTING DEMOCRACY: CM SAINIMeanwhile, Haryana chief minister Nayab Saini on Wednesday attacked the Congress over the Rajya Sabha elections, alleging that the party itself is guilty of undermining democratic principles.Speaking during the ongoing budget session, Saini said the issue did not formally arise for discussion in the House but senior Congress MLA Raghubir Kadian, had questioned the necessity of fielding a third candidate and another Congress MLA Geeta Bhukkal, who alleged that government ministers had sought to poach Congress MLAs. He clarified that the third candidate was not backed by BJP but was an independent candidate fielded by independent members.It may be recalled that while BJP’s Sanjay Bhatia had won comfortably, Congress’ nominee Karamvir Boudh narrowly won the other seat in a close contest against BJP leader Satish Nandal who fought as an independent.