An MLA of Jharkhand, bereft of voting right, stayed away as his colleagues cast their votes at the Assembly premises on Monday for choosing the next President of the country.

“I have no voting right,” said Glen Joseph Galstaun, the only nominated Ango-Indian MLA of the state who is continuing his third consecutive and also the last term a nominated MLA representing the Anglo-Indian community of Jharkhand.

Though the electoral college responsible for electing the President comprises MPs, MLAs and MLCs from across the country, the nominated members are deprived of voting rights.

“I’m one of the only two such MLAs in the whole of the country who are still continuing as MLAs at the moment,” he said, adding the other was Karnataka’s Vinisha Nero.

Nero and Galstaun are also the last two such MLAs in the country as the Union government, bypassing a Constitution amendment bill in December 2019, discontinued the then prevalent practice of nominating two members of Parliament and also MLAs in state legislatures from the Anglo-Indian community and it came into effect from January 2020.

The Constitution that came into force on January 26, 1950, had provided for such nomination initially for 10 years but was extended several times till 2020.

All those continuing as MPs and MLAs at the time of enactment of the amendment bill subsequently retired as their terms were over.

Nero, who was nominated in 2018 is expected to continue till the Karnataka Assembly election falls due next year, but Galstaun is set to continue till the end of the present Jharkhand Assembly in 2024. That will make him the last Anglo-Indian MLA of the country.

Gaulstaun’s nomination in January 2020 drew attention as he was sworn in as an MLA just three days before the Constitution amended act discounting such nominations was enacted in the country.

Actually, the Jharkhand Assembly, when the two-part bill came for discussion before it, accepted only the first part of the bill that extended reservation for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes but rejected the second part for discontinuation of reservation for Anglo-Indian community.

Subsequently, the state government nominated Gaustaun as an MLA for the third consecutive term and he was sworn in just before the Act came into effect in January 2020.

Jharkhand has 81 elected MLAs and all of them, expect BJP MLA Indrajeet Mahato who is undergoing treatment in Hyderabad, voted in the presidential poll.