BHOPAL (Madhya Pradesh): Congress legislators Ramniwas Rawat and Nirmala Sapre who have switched over to the BJP do not want to resign from the House. Both are trying to keep their membership without facing re-election.
Rawat and Sapre are working on the formula of BJP legislators Sachin Birla and Dinesh Ahirwar. During the Khandwa Lok Sabha by-election in 2021, Birla resigned from the Congress to take BJP membership.
Birla won assembly election on the Congress ticket from Barwah constituency, but after the Lok Sabha by-election, he did not resign from the Congress and the House. The Congress demanded the House to take action against Birla, but it kept mum over the issue. The then leader of opposition Govind Singh wrote a letter to the VidhanSabha Secretariat to cancel the membership of both the legislators, but his plea came to naught.
Before the 2014 parliamentary election, Dinesh Ahirwar Congress MLA from Jatara constituency in Tikamgarh district joined the BJP. He, too, did not resign from the membership of the House. Ahirwar, however, returned to the Congress.
Both Rawat and Sapre want to work on this formula. As they are against facing by-election, they do not want to resign from the House.
According to sources, the chairs Rawat and Sapre will be changed. They will be allotted seats at the centre between the ruling party and Congress to avoid an awkward situation in the House. The Congress will raise the issue and demand the House to cancel their membership of the House. But nothing is going to happen in the upcoming session of the House.
