On 3rd April (Friday), Rajendra Bharti, a Congress MLA from Madhya Pradesh, was disqualified from the legislative assembly after he was pronounced guilty in a cheating case. The Vidhan Sabha officials announced the cancellation of his membership from the Datia assembly seat following discussions. Arvind Sharma, the senior secretary of the assembly, issued the notification, a day earlier.
Arvind Sharma, the senior secretary of the Assembly, issued the notification on the evening of 2nd April. It referenced a Delhi court ruling that sentenced Bharti to three years in prison and designated the Datia seat vacant.
The Congress has contested the conviction in court. Senior Congress officials and lawyers including Kapil Sibal and Vivek Tankha are expected to challenge the decision in the high court. In the 2023 assembly elections, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former home minister of the state, Narottam Mishra, was defeated by the convict.
Bharti is a former bank employee who was sentenced to three years behind bars alongside his associate, Prajapati, regarding a cooperative bank cheating and forgery case. The two were found guilty of criminal conspiracy, fraud and falsifying bank records to secure unlawful payments of interest between 1998 and 2011 by special judge Dig Vinay Singh of the Rouse Avenue courts.
Additionally, the court fined each of the two offenders ₹1 lakh, which will be utilised to compensate the Zila Sahkari Krishi aur Gramin Vikas Bank. According to the prosecution, Bharti had attempted to postpone the trial in the current matter and was involved in at least 6 other criminal cases.
According to the court, Bharti, Prajapati, and other unidentified individuals formed a criminal scheme with the intention of defrauding the complainant bank by obtaining interest at a significantly higher rate.
“In furtherance of this conspiracy, the bank documents, which are valuable securities, were forged, and the forgery was part of the aim to cheat the bank. Bharti, who served as the Chairman of the bank during the period of the fraud, used his position to pressure employees and facilitate the unauthorised payments to his family trust,” it noted.
The defense’s claim that the accused were public servants exempt from prosecution in the absence of official government approval was rejected by the court.
The court declared, “Committing an offence punishable under law can never be considered part of a public servant’s official duties. Since forgery involves creating false documents and cheating involves deception, these acts are regarded as a dereliction of duty rather than the performance of a duty.”
In October of last year, the Supreme Court moved the case from Datia, Madhya Pradesh, where it had been filed in 2015, to Delhi due to allegations that attempts had been made to pressure defence witnesses.
