Gandhinagar: In a major relief to opposition Congress, Gujarat Assembly Speaker Rajendra Trivedi today revoked the disqualification of party MLA from Talala constituency, Bhagwan Barad.

Talking over phone Trivedi confirmed it and said that he had sought the opinion from legal department following the stay order of the Gujarat High Court of July 10 and after that he has decided to revoke the disqualification.

He said that the disqualification of Barad had been revoked as his conviction was stayed. The same rule of the Representation of peoples Act has been taken in to consideration while revoking the disqualification under which he was actually disqualified.

Notably, the Gujarat High Court had on July 10 stayed his conviction in an alleged mineral theft case by a lower court of Sutrapada in Gir Somnath district till his appeal was pending before it.

Barad was disqualified by assembly speaker on March 5 this year after March 1 conviction of 2 years nine months by the lower court in an over decade old lime-stone theft case.

Barad’s counsel Hriday Buch had earlier said that with this the disqualification of his client would also automatically end. He had said that as per the settled law, once the conviction is stayed, the consequences of disqualification does not operate.

On July 9, Barad had moved the Gujarat High Court for the second time in a fortnight challenging Veraval sessions court’s repeated refusal to stay his conviction.

The court of Justice S H Vora had on July 10 stayed the conviction till the appeal was pending. Barad had appealed before the sessions court in Veraval thrice against the verdict of the magistrate court. The sessions court had for the first time stayed it but as it did not mention any reason for its order the court of High Court judge Justice Sonia Gokani had on April 24 revoked the stay and advised Barad to go back to the court. Since then it was rejected twice with the latest being on July 3 .

The Veraval court initially stayed the conviction on the first occasion on March 7, the order was set aside by the high court for not being a reasoned one, with a direction to hear the case afresh, after the state government appealed against the same. During the second time, the Veraval court rejected Barad’s plea on April 24, against which he moved the High Court.

Earlier the Supreme Court had on April 1 stayed the by-election announced by the Election Commission (EC) for his Talala constituency on April 23 along with voting for all the 26 Lok Sabha elections in Gujarat. The disqualified MLA had challenged the hasty declaration of bypoll for his constituency by the EC before the Gujarat High Court. However, a division bench of the high court had rejected his plea, against which he had to approach the apex court.

With the end of the disqualification of Barad, the number of Congress MLAs in the 182 member assembly has gone up to 73. Two MLAs are still disqualified and their matters were before court of law.

DeshGujarat