Lucknow, Nov 22 (IANS): The eleven senior Congress leaders who were served a show-cause notice on Thursday by the party's disciplinary committee, have decided not to reply to the same.

The notice asked the Congress leaders to submit their replies within 24 hours.

Talking to IANS, former MLC Haji Siraj Mehndi said, "We are all AICC members and the state unit has no authority to give us any such notice. Besides, none of us have actually received the notice. We have only read about it in newspapers and we are not responding to media reports."

Another veteran who has been served the notice, Satyadev Tripathi, echoed similar sentiments when he said that the 'notice was not wortrh replying.'

"On November 14, we came together at the residence of former MP Santosh Singh and paid tributes to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Since we are all politicians, we also discussed the state of affairs in the party and there is nothing wrong in it. Wanting to discuss things with the party high command is not indiscipline and if they present leadership thinks so, I have nothing to say," he said.

The Uttar Pradesh Congress had issued a show cause notice to 11 senior party leaders who recently held a meeting and expressed concern over the manner in which the veterans in the party were being sidelined.

The senior leaders were asked to reply to their notices within 24 hours, the deadline of which ends on Friday evening.

The notice has been issued by former legislator Ajay Rai, member of the disciplinary committee on the directives of party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and UPCC president Ajay Kumar Lallu.

The leaders who have been issued notices include former MP Santosh Singh, Haji Siraj Mehndi, Ram Krishna Dwiwedi (former minister), Satyadev Tripathi (former minister), Rajendra Singh Solanki, Bhoodar Narain Misra, Hafiz Mohd Umar, Vinod Chaudhary, Nek Chandra Pandey, Swayam Prakash Goswami and Sanjiv Singh.