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President returns Office-of-Profit Bill : Setback for UPA, Left

	June 05, 2006

In a major setback to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, has returned the Bill to exempt scores of posts from being considered Office-of-Profit to Parliament for reconsideration. The Office-of-Profit Bill passed during the recently ended Budget session of Parliament, exempted 56 posts, in some cases with retrospective effect from 1959. Some of the offices exempted from disqualifi¬cation included the chairpersonship of the National Advisory Council which till recently was held by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and chairmanship of Santi Niketan Development Authority in West Bengal held by Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee for decades. The Left parties are especially hit by the President returning the Bill as 18 of the posts exempt are held by its leaders and functionaries.



The President’s move asserting his power and judgment while questioning the soundness and propriety of amending the original Parliament (Prevention of Disqualification) Act 1959, caught the government as well as the political class off their guard.



President Kalam said the criteria for such exemption should be based on a ‘comprehensive and generic’ criteria which should be ‘fair and reasonable’ and applicable in a ‘clear and transpar¬ent’ manner across all the states and union territories.



In only the third instance of this kind in recent history and first in his four-year-old tenure so far, Dr Kalam expressed his reservations about the propriety of the applicability of the legislation with retrospective effect, urging both Houses of Parliament to reconsider this aspect. Another point raised by the President is in relation to the posts sought to be exempted by the new law. The implication of including the names of offices for which petitions were already pending under process by the competent authority should also be addressed by Parliament while reconsidering the Bill, sources said.



Dr Kalam, who received the Bill on May 25 for assent, took the decision after giving ‘careful’ thought and wider consulta¬tion with judicial and legal experts.



The Parliament (Prevention of Disqualification) Amendment Bill 2006, passed by both Houses of Parliament, exempted 56 posts including that of the chairperson of National Advisory Council, a post held by Congress president Sonia Gandhi until March 23. The exemption of these 56 posts with retrospective effect let a slew of MPs cutting across party lines off the office-of-profit hook, including high-profile leaders like Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee. The passage of the Bill capped two months of controversy following disqualification of Jaya Bachchan, an SP Member of Parliament, and the resignation of Sonia Gandhi, who faced a disqualification petition.





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First President to invoke Art. 111



President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is India’s first President to invoke Article 111 of the Constitution - empowering him to di¬rectly message Parliament for reconsideration of any legislation sent for his assent. It took him just three working days, May 26-30, to return the amendment Bill.



In the past, Zail Singh had returned the Indian Post Office (Amendment) Bill, 1986, to the Council of Ministers, not Parlia¬ment. The Rajiv Gandhi government let the matter rest, leaving it to the V.P. Singh dispensation to advise President R. Venka¬taraman to refer back to Parliament the Bill lying with the cabinet.



What distinguished Kalam’s action was that he moved indepen¬dently under Art. 111 unlike Singh and Venkataraman who went by the Cabinet’s advice. Even in the case of the Salaries, Allow¬ances and Pensions of MPs (Amendment) Bill, - meant to extend the benefits to Members who lasted only a year in office - Venkatara¬man had withheld assent on the PM’s advice based on the Attorney General’s view that the law was infirm.



As President, Kalam has assented to over 200 legislations, scrutinising them to come to grips with the constitutional scheme. In deference to propriety and popular perception, he re¬turned to the Cabinet in 2002 an ordinance that nullified the EC’s order that made it mandatory for candidates to disclose their criminal records, if any, and assets and liabilities in their nomination forms. Kalam’s posers to the NDA Government focused on its impact on the court’s directive and spirit of the Representation of the People Act. He assented to the law only on receiving it from Cabinet the second time.





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Bill to be reconsidered in Monsoon session



The Government has said that the President was well within his powers to send back the Office of Profit Bill. Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said, President Kalam returning the Bill was a constitutional procedure and the Government would reconsider it and reply to him. But he rejected interpretation sought to be put by the BJP on the Bill that it was unconstitu¬tional. “The President is well within his rights in returning the Bill. He has simply exercised his rights,” Singhvi said.



The Union Cabinet met on Friday, June 2, but reportedly the issues arising out of the President’s decision was not consid¬ered. Speaking to reporters after the Cabinet meeting, Parlia¬mentary Affairs Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi, however, said that the issues relating to the Bill on Office of Profit would be discussed in the Monsoon session of Parliament and that the session would start in the last week of July as per the normal practice. “There is no thinking in the Government to advance the Monsoon session or to call for a special session to consider the matter”, Dasmunshi said.



Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also met President Kalam to discuss the issue.



Observers say that although the Manmohan Singh Government is set to send the same Bill to the President through the two Houses of Parliament in accordance with Art. 111 of the Constitution, the Government does not want to give the impression of being in any undue haste or be seen as taking a confrontationist line with the President over the issue.



The Bill is to be again introduced in both Houses of Par¬liament in the Monsoon session, slated for the latter half of July, without effecting any change in it and without advancing the session’s schedule. Dr Kalam will have to give his assent to the legislation if it is sent to him for a second time.



Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, made it clear after the Cabinet meeting that there was “no urgency” for the government in the matter and that the Monsoon session will be held as scheduled. Das Munshi did not comment on the government’s reaction in the event of the Election Commission re-activating its exercise to process the disqualification petitions pending against dozens of MPs, particularly from the Congress and the Left, for allegedly holding various offices of profit.



The Manmohan Singh Government barely has any option other than clinching the passage of the Bill in its present form expe¬ditiously. The sword of disqualification is hanging over many MPs, an overwhelming majority of whom belong to the UPA. Of the 56 posts exempted by the Bill from the office of profit category, over 40 belong to the UPA MPs, including high-profile leaders like Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and leader of the House in the Lok Sabha, Pranab Mukherjee.



The BJP has been happy at the President’s action even though some of the state governments controlled by it like that in Jharkhand have passed similar legislation on office of profit. The party demanded the resignation of Congress president Sonia Gandhi from Parliament on the setback suffered by the UPA govern¬ment. A delegation of BJP leaders met the Election Commission on Wednesday, May 31, to demand that the inquiry into the complaints against MPs holding offices of profit should be speeded up.



The Left parties on the other hand have accused the Election Commission of being pushed by the BJP into the reopening of pending petitions against MPs. The parties have been criti¬cal of the Commission for its handling of the Assembly elections in West Bengal. They claimed that the Commission discriminated against West Bengal in the matter of spreading the polling over five days, among others.



The Left leaders at a meeting on June 1 also made a veiled attack on the President on his questioning the propriety of bringing the law with retrospective effect. “This is the prero¬gative of Parliament and state legislatures. They have the powers to do so,” said CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat.



The Election Commission, on its part, said that its enquiry into the complaints against MPs referred by President Kalam continues. Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami said in New Delhi on June 2, “There has been no delay in our enquiry, except for the period when we were busy with the Assembly polls in five states.”



Reports say that the EC enquiry into the complaints against Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and Union Minister Meira Kumar is continuing. The Commission is also looking into the complaints against SP leader Amar Singh and Left leaders,

Mohammad Salim, Janab Hannan Mollah, Lakshman Seth, Amitava Nandi, Sudhanshu Sil, Tarit Baran Topdar, Bansagopal Chowdhury, Sujan Chakraborty and Nilotpal Basu.



It said petitions were also pending against Anuradha Choudh¬ary, Chanderpal Singh Yadav, T Subba Rami Reddy, Mati Lal Sarkar, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Krishan Murari Moghe and Ram Kripal Yadav.



The EC has so far disqualified Samajwadi Party leader Jaya Bachchan from the Rajya Sabha for holding an office of profit. However, it rejected the complaints against NAC chairperson Sonia Gandhi, industrialist and Member of Rajya Sabha Anil Ambani, and another Member of the Rajya Sabha, Kapila Vatsayan, following their resignation from Parliament.



As Sonia Gandhi had already resigned from her Lok Sabha seat, the EC held that the complaint against her “had become infructuous.”