Rajasthan: Congress MLAs supporting CM Gehlot raise slogans for Assembly session at Raj Bhawan

Congress MLAs supporting Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot raised slogans at the Raj Bhawan on Friday after reports came to the fore that Governor Kalraj Mishra had denied convening the state Assembly session due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"If media reports are true about Governor saying that state Assembly session can't be conducted due to COVID-19, then we are ready to conduct COVID-19 tests of 200 MLAs," Raghu Sharma, Rajasthan Minister and Congress leader said.

The Chief Minister had met the Governor on Friday afternoon over the issue of the convening of the Assembly session.

Chief Minister Gehlot, earlier, alleged that colleagues, apparently referring to Congress MLAs from the Sachin Pilot camp, have been held hostages in Haryana under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s supervision.

"Some of our colleagues have been kept as hostages in Haryana under BJP's supervision. Everybody knows that. It may be possible they don't want to be there. They are our own colleagues," he said at a press conference here.

Rajasthan plunged into a political crisis as differences between Pilot and Gehlot came out in the open.

Later, Rajasthan Assembly Speaker C P Joshi sent disqualification notices to Pilot and 18 MLAs under the anti-defection law after the chief whip's application for their disqualification.

The MLAs were earlier asked to present before the Assembly Speaker on July 17, but the same was deferred in view of the hearing before the High Court.

Pilot and the 18 MLAs have approached the Rajasthan High Court against the disqualification notices issued against them.

The High Court had asked Speaker Joshi to defer the proceedings pending before him on the disqualification notices issued to Pilot and the MLAs of his faction and put off the verdict on the matter till July 24.

( With inputs from ANI )