NEW DELHI: 20 MLAs of the Aam Aadmi Party on Monday withdrew from the Delhi high court their plea for a stay on the Election Commission's recommendation seeking their disqualification, reported news agency PTI.

Their counsel told the court that since President Ram Nath Kovind had accepted the EC recommendation and issued a notification disqualifying them, the plea had become infructuous.

Instead, the counsel will file an appeal after examining the Presidential order.

Yesterday, in a blow to the party, President Kovind approved the disqualification of the legislators for holding offices of profit.

The axed MLAs include Alka Lamba, Adarsh Shastri, Sanjeev Jha, Rajesh Gupta, Kailash Gehlot, Vijendra Garg, Praveen Kumar, Sharad Kumar, Madan Lal Khufiya, Shiv Charan Goyal, Sarita Singh, Naresh Yadav, Rajesh Rishi, Anil Kumar, Som Dutt, Avtar Singh, Sukhvir Singh Dala, Manoj Kumar and Nitin Tyagi.

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had hit out at the EC's "extremely unconstitutional, unethical and biased decision" and had accused the BJP of planning the matter to harass his party's members.

"They (BJP-led Centre) have tremendously victimised us by imposing fake cases on our MLAs. They conducted CBI raids on me and didn't get anything and today they declared 20 of our MLAs disqualified," he had said.

If the court holds the disqualification valid, Delhi will have bypolls for the 20 seats within the next six months.

(With inputs from PTI)

