New Delhi, Jan 22: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday withdrew its petition before the Delhi High Court challenging the disqualification of its 20 legislators. Minutes before the hearing, the party said since President Ram Nath Kovind has already approved their dismissal, the incumbent plea before the court has become infructuous.

AAP, however, said it would file a fresh petition after studying the President's order. The party blamed Kovind of acting in a "biased" manner as he refused to entertain the appeal of AAP legislators to hear their side of the argument before approving the Union Law Ministry's recommendation to disqualify them.

Hitting out at the President's assent to Centre's recommendation, senior party leader Ashutosh said Kovind's order "is unconstitutional and dangerous for democracy".

The 20 AAP MLAs who have faced the axe for occupying offices of profit include: Alka Lamba, Vijendra Garg, Praveen Kumar, Sharad Kumar, Madan Lal Khufiya, Adarsh Shastri, Sanjeev Jha, Rajesh Gupta, Kailash Gehlot, Shiv Charan Goyal, Sarita Singh, Naresh Yadav, Rajesh Rishi, Anil Kumar, Som Dutt, Avtar Singh, Sukhvir Singh Dala, Manoj Kumar and Nitin Tyagi.

They were appointed by the government as Parliamentary Secretaries to assist the State Cabinet Ministers. Although AAP claimed that it offered "no salary or perks" to the MLAs for holding the offices of profit, their argument was supposedly dismissed by the Law Ministry.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, on Sunday, blamed Centre's "vendetta politics" for the ouster of his 20 MLAs. "God gave us 67 seats for a reason. After threatening my MLAs and getting them booked in fake cases, they (Centre) have finally found a false pretext to disqualify my MLAs," Kejriwal said, adding that his party is not afraid of elections.

In case the court refrains from staying the President's order, the Election Commission is expected to announce bypolls for the 20 vacant seats within the next six months.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 22, 2018 05:49 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).