GANDHINAGAR: Gujarat Congress chief Amit Chavda, here on Monday, suspended all five legislators, who had resigned from the Assembly on Saturday and Sunday.
"All the five legislators are suspended as they ignored party's interest through the resignation," the GPCC chief said in a letter. The suspended MLAs are Praveen Maru (Gadhda), Soma Ganda Patel (Limdi), J.V. Kakadia (Dhari), Pradhyumansinh Jadeja (Abdasa) and Mangal Gavit (Dang).
The resignations were accepted by Assembly Speaker Rajendra Trivedi on Saturday and Sunday.
The development comes days before the Rajya Sabha elections on March 26. Four sitting members from Gujarat will retire on the April 9.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) having 103 members and the Congress 73 in the Assembly, both parties were expected to win two seats each. But the BJP gave a shocker by fielding Narhari Amin, former Congress leader, as third candidate on the last day of filing nominations.
The other two BJP candidates are RameelaBen Bara and Abhay Bhardwaj. The Congress candidates are Shaktisinh Gohil and Bhartsinh Solanki.
The BJP has support three more MLAs, two of the Bharatiya Tribal Party (BTP) and one from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which takes it tally to 106. To get its third candidate elected, the BJP needs support of 5 Congress MLAs, which it is confident of acquiring.
Fearing poaching, the Congress shifted its 14 MLAs to Jaipur on Saturday. But the recent developments have changed the scenario and with the resignations the total requirement of votes has declined, favouring the BJP.