Prez polls: HC allows Pappu Yadav to vote from jail

New Delhi, July 17 (UNI) The Delhi High Court today allowed Rajesh Raja alias Pappu Yadav, Member of Parliament from Madhepura constituency (Bihar), currently lodged in the capital's Tihar Jail to vote in the July 19 presidential election.

Justice Badr Durrez Ahmed directed the Tihar Jail superintendent to provide adequate security to Pappu Yadav to go to the Parliament house for two hours any time between 10 am to 5 pm.

The court directed that Pappu Yadav should be provided a wheel chair as he had a fractured leg.

Pappu Yadav, an MP of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, moved an application in the court that he has received an official communication from P R Dasmunsi, the official representative of UPA-Left presidential candidate Pratibha Devisingh Patil, to apply to the court to give him permission to go to Parliament house to vote or the ballot should be sent to him in Court No.3 of the Tihar jail.

Yadav was sent to jail on February 19,2005 on the orders of Supreme Court. He got a leg fractured in June this year while he was playing badminton in the Jail. He has to be carried in a wheel-chair during all his movements to the court.

The Supreme Court will hear tomorrow a petition seeking direction to the Election Commission not to permit MPs and MLAs who are in jail to cast their votes in the coming Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections.

UNI