New Delhi
The Supreme Court on Monday asked former Janata Dal president Sharad Yadav to respond to a petition by a leader of Nitish Kumar’s faction asking for documents related to the former leader’s new party to be placed on record.

Yadav has two weeks to respond. The court also restrained the Delhi High Court from proceeding with the case for two weeks.
Ram Chandra Prasad Singh, the party’s leader in the Upper House, is the petitioner in the case.

Senior advocate Ranjit Kumar, who was appearing for Singh, said the high court should be directed to adjourn the case until Supreme Court decides what to do with the petition before of it.
Singh had challenged a September 11 order of the Delhi High Court that dismissed the petitioner’s petition to have the records placed before it, along with additional documents to demonstrate Yadav’s post-disqualification conduct.

Singh said in his petition to the high court that Yadav had launched his new party—the Loktantrik Janata Dal—on May 18, 2018, while his petition challenging his disqualification from Rajya Sabha was still pending before the high court. Singh wanted video recordings of Yadav’s speeches and photographs of the event to be placed on record.

The Delhi High Court however dismissed the application saying that the scope of the petition before it was to merely examine the legality and validity of Rajya Sabha Chairman’s order disqualifying Yadav from the upper house on December 4, 2017.

Yadav joined hands with the opposition after JD (U) president Nitish Kumar, Bihar’s chief minister, dumped an alliance with the Rastriya Janata Dal and the Congress in Bihar to tie up with its old ally Bharatiya Janata Party in July last year.

The high court had previously said that Yadav would have to refund the salary he draws while his petition is pending if he wasn’t successful, but on December 15 allowed him to draw his salary, allowances, perks and retain the bungalow, although it refused to grant an interim stay on his disqualification.

The same order was later passed by the court on a similar plea moved by Yadav’s colleague and MP, Ali Anwar, both of whom were disqualified from the Upper House by the December 4, 2017, by the Rajya Sabha chairman.

Yadav has challenged his disqualification before the high court on several grounds, including that he was not given any chance to present his views by the Rajya Sabha chairman before he passed the order.

On the other hand, Ram Chandra Prasad Singh had sought disqualification of Yadav and Anwar on the ground that they had attended a rally of opposition parties in Patna in violation of party directives.