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Thursday, Apr 29, 2004

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National

Court notice to Centre, States on election to Rajya Sabha

By Our Legal Correspondent

NEW DELHI, APRIL 28. The Supreme Court today issued notice to the Centre, the Attorney-General of India, all States and Union Territories on a petition challenging the amendments made to the Representation of the People Act, 1951, dispensing with the requirement of domicile for candidates contesting the Rajya Sabha elections and providing for open ballot.

A three-member Bench, comprising the Chief Justice V. N. Khare, Justice S. B. Sinha and Justice S. H. Kapadia, issued the notice after hearing senior journalist and former Rajya Sabha member, Kuldip Nayar, whose letter to the CJI was treated as a public interest petition.

The Bench also issued notice on the prayer for a stay of the impugned amendment and asked the Centre and States to file their response by July 12, when a bench headed by Justice Ruma Pal would take up the matter again. Mr. Nayar was asked to file additional grounds in support of his petition.

Mr. Nayar submitted that federalism was part of the `basic structure' of the Constitution and the amendment to the RP Act made in August 2003, being contrary to the basic structure, was unconstitutional and liable to be struck down.

He said Article 84 (c) of the Constitution dealt with qualification for membership of Parliament either prescribed in that behalf or under any law made by Parliament. Accordingly, under the RP Act a candidate for being elected to the Council of States should be ordinarily a resident of the State concerned.

However, this requirement had been done away with in the amended Act and by this Parliament had sought to change the basic structure of the Constitution.

Mr. Nayar said he had written a column, highlighting the shortcomings in the amendment and the former President, R. Venkataraman, who was a member of the Constitutional Assembly, had written to him agreeing with his views.

He also brought to the notice of the court the recommendation made by the Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution that for being elected to the Rajya Sabha the candidate should be a voter from that State. He said that in July, about 75 members were to be elected and if this amendment was given effect to, the States need not have their own people. If this was allowed to happen, the whole object of the Council of States would be defeated. He, therefore, asked the Court to strike down the amendment and restore the original provision in the Act.

Mr. Nayar also assailed another amendment by which voting had been made through open ballot instead of secret ballot.

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