The Delhi High Court will hear the Aam Aadmi Party’s appeal against the Election Commission’s decision of disqualifying its 20 MLA today at 4 pm.

In a major setback to the AAP, President Ram Nath Kovind yesterday disqualified 20 of its MLAs in Delhi for holding offices of profit, a decision the party said showed constitutional authorities were behaving like “handmaidens of the central government”.

The party is even willing to move Supreme Court if the appeal is rejected in the High Court.

The Election Commission on 19 January had recommended that the AAP legislators be disqualified as they were appointed parliamentary secretaries Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

If AAP fails to get reprieve from the courts, Delhi will have by-polls for the 20 seats. Once the vacancies are announced by the Assembly, the AAP’s strength would go down to 46 from 66 in the 70-member House. However, it will continue to have a majority to run the state.

While, the BJP welcomed the president’s decision and demanded Kejriwal’s resignation on moral grounds, the Congress alleged that there was a deal between the BJP and the AAP due to which the EC delayed the disqualification recommendation by a month.

AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal tweeted, “There was some logic when God gave us 67 seats. The Almighty stood behind us in our every step.

Otherwise we would have been nothing… Just don’t stray away from the path of truth.”

Interestingly, BJP leaders Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha backed the AAP with the former saying the decison depicts “tughluqshahi” of the worst order.

AAP leader Ashutosh said the president’s order is “unconstitutional” and “dangerous for democracy.”

The names of  the 20 disqualified MLAs disqualified are Adarsh Shastri (Dwarka), Alka Lamba (Chandni Chowk), Anil Bajpai (Gandhi Nagar), Avtar Singh (Kalkaji), Kailash Gahlot (Najafgarh), Madan Lal (Kasturba Nagar), Manoj Kumar (Kondli), Naresh Yadav (Mehrauli), Nitin Tyagi (Laxmi Nagar), Praveen Kumar (Jangpura), Rajesh Gupta (Wazirpur), Rajesh Rishi (Janakpuri), Sanjeev Jha (Burari), Sarita Singh (Rohtas Nagar), Som Dutt (Sadar Bazar), Sharad Kumar (Narela), Shiv Charan Goel (Moti Nagar), Sukhbir Singh (Mundka), Vijendar Garg (Rajinder Nagar) and Jarnail Singh (Tilak Nagar).

(With PTI inputs)