Another RJD MLA loses House membership following conviction

Anil Kumar Sahni is the second RJD legislator, after Anant Singh, to have lost his assembly membership in the past few months.

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) legislator Anil Kumar Sahni, who was convicted in a case of fraud by a CBI court in Delhi recently, has been disqualified as a member of the Bihar assembly, according to a notification issued by the assembly secretariat on Thursday evening.

RJD MLA Anil Kumar Sahni . (HT Photo)

Sahni is the second RJD legislator, after Anant Singh, to have lost his assembly membership in the past few months.

Sahni, a former Rajya Sabha member, had won Kudhni seat in Muzaffarpur in the 2020 assembly polls.

Last month, Sahni, along with two others, was sentenced to two years of rigorous imprisonment in the leave travel concession (LTC) scam case which was investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Sahni and others allegedly used forged e-tickets and fake boarding passes to defraud the Rajya Sabha to the tune of ₹23.71 lakh by claiming travel and dearness allowance reimbursement without undertaking the actual journey.

CBI had registered the case in 2013 after the matter was referred to it by Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).

In 2013, the Supreme Court had held that charge-sheeted Members of Parliament and MLAs, on conviction for offences, will be immediately disqualified from holding membership of the House without being given three months’ time for appeal, for which there was a provision under Section 8 (4) of the Representation of People’s Act, 1951, to move the higher court.

Sahni is the fourth RJD legislator to have lost assembly membership following conviction in a criminal or corruption case in the last four years.

While Mokama MLA Anant Singh lost his assembly membership in July this year following his conviction in an arms recovery case, Raj Ballabh Yadav and Illiyas Hussain were disqualified in 2018 following their conviction in rape and bitumen scam cases, respectively.

After the 2020 assembly elections, a report by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) & Election Watch had claimed that 163 (68%) out of the 241 newly elected leaders from all parties in the 243-member Assembly were facing criminal cases.