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Delhi HC restores membership of 20 disqualified AAP MLA’s

Team SoOLEGAL 23 Mar 2018 5:33pm

Delhi HC restores membership of 20 disqualified AAP MLA’s

New Delhi : A bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna and Chander Shekhar of Delhi High Court today passed an order by which it set aside the Election Commission recommendation disqualifying 20 AAP MLAs for holding office-of-profit as parliamentary secretaries.

In a verdict which can be termed as damaging for Centre’s credibility, the bench said that the Centre’s notification disqualifying the AAP MLAs was bad in law and remanded their plea back to the Election Commission which will hear it afresh. It said there was violation of natural justice and no oral hearing was given to the MLAs before disqualifying them as legislators of the Delhi Assembly.

“Opinion of Election Commission of India (given to the President of India) dated January 19, 2018, is vitiated and bad in law for failure to comply with principles of natural justice,” the court said.

Reacting to the judgment chief minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted, “It is a victory of truth.”

Lawyer and petitioner in the case Prashant Patel said, “The court has said this case will be reopened. I had just raised a constitutional issue, there is no setback for me.”

The case dates back to March 2015 when the Delhi government appointed 21 MLAs as parliamentary secretaries. The appointments were made to assist cabinet ministers and include more MLAs in governance work. A parliamentary secretary assists a minister, and the office usually comes with perks similar to that of a minister.

Patel had complained to the then President, Pranab Mukherjee, that 21 of the AAP legislators were occupying offices of profit. Mukherjee referred the complaint to the Election Commission (EC).

On January 19 this year, the EC recommended disqualification of 20 MLA’s as one had resigned to contest from Punjab.This recommendation was accepted by President immediately.

Out of these 20 disqualified AAP MLAs, eight challenged the Presidential order in the Delhi  High court on January 23. The high court, on January 24, refused to stay the President’s order, but restrained the EC from taking any  measures which may precipitate the matter such as announcing dates for by polls to fill the vacancies.

The 20 disqualified MLAs include Adarsh Shastri (Dwarka), Alka Lamba (Chandni Chowk), Anil Bajpai (Gandhi Nagar), Avtar Singh (Kalkaji), Kailash Gahlot (Najafgarh) – who is also a minister – Madan Lal (Kasturba Nagar), Manoj Kumar (Kondli), Naresh Yadav (Mehrauli), Nitin Tyagi (Laxmi Nagar), Praveen Kumar (Jangpura).

The others are Rajesh Gupta (Wazirpur), Rajesh Rishi (Janakpuri), Sanjeev Jha (Burari), Sarita Singh (Rohtas Nagar), Som Dutt (Sadar Bazar), Sharad Kumar (Narela), Shiv Charan Goel (Moti Nagar), Sukhbir Singh (Mundka), Vijendar Garg (Rajinder Nagar) and Jarnail Singh (Tilak Nagar), who quit to contest from Punjab.




Tagged: Delhi High Court   Centre   AAP   Election Commission  
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