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Office of Profit Bill : President still to take a decision |
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President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is reportedly studying the Office of Profit Bill which has been sent back to him after reconsideration by the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha without effecting any changes. Sources say that President has not taken any decision so far about the Bill which seeks to bail out Members of Parliament faced with disqualification because of holding offices of profit.
In the first instance, the Bill was sent for Presidential assent on May 25 and Dr Kalam returned it to Parliament a week later for reconsideration.
The President urged Parliament to draft a comprehensive criterion to be applied across the states and Union Territories. After seeking the opinion of legal and constitutional experts, Dr Kalam had suggested that there should be “no ad hoc approach in judging an office of profit.”
Later, the Congress-led UPA government decided to bring the Parliament (Prevention of Disqualification) Amendment Bill, 2006, in its original form without effecting any changes. According to the Constitution, if the Bill in question is sent back to Rashtrapati Bhavan with or without any amendment, he will have to give his assent.
Article 111 of the Constitution states: “When a Bill has been passed by the Houses of Parliament, it shall be presented to the President, and the President shall declare either that he assents to the Bill, or that he withholds assent therefrom:
Provided that the President may, as soon as possible after the presentation to him of a Bill for assent, return the Bill if it is not a Money Bill to the Houses with a message requesting that they will reconsider the Bill or any specified provisions thereof and, in particular, will consider the desirability of introducing any such amendments as he may recommend in his message, and when a Bill is so returned, the Houses shall reconsider the Bill accordingly, and if the Bill is passed again by the Houses with or without amendments and presented to the President for assent, the President shall not withhold assent therefrom.
The Lok Sabha cleared the Office of Profit Bill on July 31 after nearly seven hours of acrimonious debate. In the face of Opposition from the BJP, the Bill was adopted by 230 votes to 71 after Trinamul Congress leader Mamata Banerjee insisted on a division.
Law Minister H.R. Bhardwaj said that the Bill would apply with retrospective effect. He asserted that Parliament was perfectly within its rights to do so. Observers say that the Bill effectively clears 40 Members of Parliament, many of them belonging to the Left parties of the threat of disqualification.
Both sides pooled their best resources for the debate - Congress fielded Kapil Sibal while the NDA first fielded Ananth Kumar and later L.K. Advani - before the Bill, already passed by the Rajya Sabha, was adopted by the House.
It was the Left, however, that came in for repeated attack from nearly every Opposition speaker, not just Mamata Banerjee who moved no fewer than three amendments. All were rejected. Nearly all Left MPs against whom the disqualification petitions had been filed were present in the Lok Sabha during the debate, except for Speaker Somnath Chatterjee.
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