Soon after the Election Commission’s recommendation for disqualification of 20 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MlAs to the President of India over office of profit, an angry AAP launched a scathing attack on the poll panel. The party said that EC never “touched this low”. AAP leaders alleged there was a political conspiracy behind the EC’s decision.
The AAP said the recommendation was based on false allegations, alleging that the “BJP through its agents has seriously compromised the prestige of the EC just to divert the attention of the nation from its all-round failures”.
“What the Modi Government appointed Election Commission is leaking to the media is a recommendation made without hearing the arguments of MlAs on the false allegation of office of profit. Such a blatantly biased recommendation will not stand scrutiny in court of law.
“This must be the first ever recommendation in EC history where a recommendation has been sent without even hearing the main matter on merits. No hearing took place in the EC on the point of office of profit,” AAP spokesperson Nagendra Sharma tweeted.
Attacking Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) AK Joti, the AAP said the CEC was “repaying the debt” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi before his retirement.
Terming EC’s order against the “principles of natural justice”, AAP Delhi unit chief spokesperson Saurabh Bharadwaj said the poll panel did not hear the MlAs’ case. He, however, stated that the party is yet to get any official communication on the matter.
Earlier in the day, the EC sent its recommendations to President Ram Nath Kovind for disqualification of the 20 AAP MlAs for holding “office of profit”.
Bharadwaj said the decision comes at a time when the CEC is due to retire on January 23. “AK Joti was the Principal Secretary under (the then Gujarat Chief Minister) Narendra Modi and then the Chief Secretary of Gujarat. He is retiring on Monday. So you want to repay Modi ji’s debt. You are mortgaging a constitutional post like the Election Commission,” he alleged.
Joti, an IAS officer of 1975-batch Gujarat cadre, took charge as Election Commissioner in 2015.
This is not the first time the AAP has targeted the apex poll body of the country. In the past too its leaders had hit out at the poll panel on the electronic voting machines issue.
“The hearing before the Election Commission was not about disqualification. The ongoing hearing was whether the Election Commission can hear the office of profit proceedings when the Delhi High Court has stated that they are not parliamentary secretaries,” Bharadwaj claimed.
Senior AAP leader Ashutosh said the Election Commission had never touched this low. “The EC should not be the letter box of the PMO. But that is the reality today,” Ashutosh tweeted.
“A person like me who has covered EC as a reporter during (TN Seshan) days, today I can say EC has never touched so low ever,” the scribe-turned politician added.
The AAP at present has officially 66 members in the House although some have since turned dissidents. The other four seats are held by the BJP.
Initially, the case was against 21 MlAs but it now stands at 20 after Rajouri Garden MlA Jarnail Singh resigned to contest against Parkash Singh Badal in the Punjab Assembly elections in 2017.
Even if 20 MlAs are disqualified, the ruling party will still have a comfortable majority in the Delhi Assembly.
The MlAs who face the axe are Alka lamba, Adarsh Shastri, Sanjeev Jha, Rajesh Gupta, Kailash Gehlot, Vijendra Garg, Praveen Kumar, Sharad Kumar, Madan lal Khufiya, Shiv Charan Goyal, Sarita Singh, Naresh Yadav, Rajesh Rishi, Anil Kumar, Som Dutt, Avtar Singh, Sukhvir Singh Dala, Manoj Kumar, Nitin Tyagi and Jarnail Singh (Tilak Nagar).
It may be noted that the EC had issued a notice to the AAP MlAs seeking an explanation after rejecting their pleas to drop the ‘office of profit’ case against them.
In March 2015, the AAP Government passed an amendment to the Delhi Members of legislative Assembly (Removal of Disqualification) Act, 1997, to exempt the posts of Parliamentary Secretary from the definition of office of profit with retrospective effect.
But then President Pranab Mukherjee refused to give assent, following which the appointments were set aside by the Delhi High Court in September 2016, declaring them illegal since the order had been passed “without concurrence/approval of the lt Governor”.