KATHMANDU, APRIL 30
Four Janata Samajbadi Party-Nepal lawmakers of the Lumbini Provincial Assembly who were expelled by the party's executive committee on Wednesday have decided to move the Supreme Court against the decision.
Bijaya Yadav, one of the expelled lawmakers, told THT that they would file a case in the court on Sunday challenging their expulsion from Lumbini Provincial Assembly. He said the speaker, who was supposed to verify the signatures of party's executive committee members, removed them from the PA without fulfilling the required process.
A meeting of the party's executive committee held on Wednesday decided to remove four party lawmakers of the Lumbini Provincial Assembly – Bijay Bahadur Yadav, Santosh Kumar Pandey, Suman Rayamajhi, and Kalpana Pandey - from the party and from the PA.
The four lawmakers had signed the no-trust motion against Lumbini Chief Minister Shankar Pokharel, but joined Pokharel's Cabinet.
The four lawmakers, who supported Lumbini Chief Minister Shankar Pokharel against the wishes of party Co-chair Upendra Yadav and former prime minister Baburam Bhattarai, lost their PA seat yesterday as the Yadav-Bhattarai faction wrote to the PA that they had been removed from the party for anti-party activities.
The Yadav-Bhattarai faction has sent signatures of the majority members of the party's executive committee to Lumbini Provincial Assembly, but the expelled lawmakers say the executive committee meeting called by the Yadav-Bhattarai faction had no legal validity. JSP-N Co-chair Mahantha Thakur had written to Speaker Purna Bahadur Gharti yesterday saying that the party had not taken any action against the four lawmakers.
JSP-N leader Rajendra Mahato said the unification between the erstwhile Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal and Samajwadi Party-Nepal had not completed in Lumbini and no provincial committee had not been formed there yet. "They are saying that the removal of the four lawmakers from the party was recommended by the party's provincial committee, whereas such a committee has not been formed yet," Mahato said.
He added that four out of six lawmakers were majority members in the parliamentary party and they were free to take autonomous decisions. Mahato said the party's central body had not issued any order to party lawmakers in Lumbini.
Pokharel had inducted the JSP-N lawmakers into his Cabinet on April 19.
A version of this article appears in the print on May 1, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
