Bengaluru, July 29 (TIWN) A day before the trust vote on the B.S. Yeddiyurappa government in the Karnataka Assembly, Speaker K.R. Ramesh Kumar on Sunday disqualified 14 rebel legislators of the Congress and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) for defying their parties whip to attend the House on July 23.

Kumar announced that all the disqualification for all the rebel ex-legislators will be valid for the current term of the House, which is scheduled to end in May 2023. Effectively, the politicians will not be able to contest the by-elections that will be held in their constituencies.  "The disqualified MLAs cannot fight elections until the expiry of the term of the 15th Assembly," ANI quoted Kumar as saying. The 14 MLAs include Byrathi Basavaraj, Munirathna, ST Somashekar, Roshan Baig, Anand Singh, MTB Nagaraj, BC Patil, Prathap Gouda Patil, Dr Sudhakar, Shivaram Hebbar, Shrimant Patil of the Congress party and K Gopalaiah, Narayana Gowda, and AH Vishwanath of the JD(S).