Suspended Rashtriya Janata Dal(RJD) MLA Raj Ballabh Yadav has been disqualified from the Bihar Assembly.
A notification issued by the Vidhan Sabha Secretariat said that Yadav has been disqualified with effect from the date on which he was convicted by the Special Court in Patna for MPs, MLAs, and MLCs. The special court sentenced him to life imprisonment for raping a 13-year-old girl at his residence in Bihar.
Yadav was held guilty under Section 376 of the IPC and Section 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offence (POCSO) Act, 2012. Five others, including four women, were also awarded punishments in the two-year-old rape case.
Yadav, who represented Nawada in the Bihar Assembly, is the second RJD MLA to have been disqualified in recent times with Mohd Ilyas Hussain being the first. Hussain had lost his membership because of his conviction in a corruption case by a CBI court in Ranchi.
With the disqualification of Raj Ballabh Yadav, the total number of MLAs of Lalu Prasad Yadav-led RJD in the Bihar Assembly has come down to 79.