Meet this 30-year old lawyer behind disqualification of 20 AAP MLAs

When 30-year old advocate Prashant Patel filed a short, two-page petition alleging illegality in appointment of Parliamentary Secretaries in the Aam Aadmi Party government with President Pranab Mukherjee’s secretariat in June 2015, it barely caused any ripples. But 2 years later, the petition has caused a major turmoil in the Capital.

Initially, Patel’s petition moved at a glacial pace. It took multiple RTI applications with additional evidences and follow ups with the President’s Secretariat and the Election Commission for the authorities to take cognisance.

Patel, a member of the Hindu Legal Cell, has previously filed an FIR against Aamir Khan and Rajkumar Hirani for allegedly portraying gods in a poor light in the film PK. In the JNU slogans controversy, Patel filed an intervention in the Supreme Court when Kanhaiya Kumar sought bail. Patel also filed a complaint against former Censor Board chief Leela Samson for alleged corruption.


He belongs to Uttar Pradesh’s Fatehpur district. He studied Physics and Creative Designing in a minority Christian college affiliated to the Allahabad University before studying law. After completing his LLB from Chaudhry Charan Singh University in Greater Noida, Patel came to Delhi and began doing family (read divorce) and criminal cases.

Patel denies any claims about having “political motives” and being part of a “conspiracy” (Parliamentary Secretaries have written so in their official replies to the EC).