6 BJD MLAs sent notices by party for Rajya Sabha vote hit back, cite SC verdicts| India News
Six Biju Janata Dal (BJD) legislators who were slapped with show-cause notices for supporting independent candidate Dilip Ray in the March 16 Rajya Sabha elections have called the notices “illegal, arbitrary, baseless, and unconstitutional” and threatened criminal proceedings Biju Janata Dal (BJD) chief Naveen Patnaik casts his vote for the Rajya Sabha elections at the Odisha assembly on March 16 (PTI) BJD chief whip Pramila Mallick on March 17 issued notices to six MLAs — Chakramani Kanhar (Baliguda), Naba Kishore Mallick (Jayadev), Souvic Biswal (Choudwar-Cuttack), Subasini Jena (Basta), Ramakanta Bhoi (Tirtol), and Devi Ranjan Tripathy (Banki) — after they backed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supported independent candidate Dilip Ray instead of the BJD-Congress joint candidate, urologist Datteswar Hota. In the end, the BJP won two seats, and Dilip Ray, an independent candidate backed by the party, won a third, leaving the BJD with just one. In separate but similar replies to Mallick, the MLAs cited Supreme Court verdicts and Election Commission guidelines to argue that political parties could not issue whips in Rajya Sabha …









