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Office-of-profit law unconstitutional: Salve

Legal Correspondent

“It was passed with retrospective effect to protect 55 MPs”

Concerns raised by the then President not addressed: counsel
“The law is arbitrary and unreasonable”

New Delhi: The Parliament (Prevention of Disqualification) Amendment Act, 2006, exempting 55 offices from the purview of disqualification is patently unconstitutional, senior counsel Harish Salve argued in the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

A Bench, comprising Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justices R.V. Raveendran and J.M. Panchal, is hearing two petitions — one from the Consumer Education and Research Society and another from Dinesh Trivedi, a Member of Parliament — challenging the constitutional validity of the law.

Objects and reasons

Mr. Salve said the Act was intended to protect certain sitting MPs, against whom disqualification petitions were pending before the Election Commission. As admitted in the statement of objects and reasons, the impugned Act WAS passed with retrospective effect solely to protect about 55 sitting MPs.

“Undue haste”

Counsel said the law was passed for the second time in undue haste without seriously addressing any of the concerns raised by the then President while returning the Bill on May 31, 2006. The Joint Committee of Parliament on office of profit comprised 10 Lok Sabha members and five Rajya Sabha members. In the past, before an ‘office of profit’ was exempted from the rigour of Article 102 (1) (a) (disqualification for holding office of profit) the same was referred to the Joint Committee for its report on whether the office referred to was an office of profit and whether or not exemption should be granted. This statutory practice was not followed in the present case.

Mr. Salve submitted that before resorting to the wholesale exemption of 55 offices of profit, and that too with retrospective effect, the existing Joint Committee should have been asked to look into each one of the offices of profit in question and to consider the concerns expressed by the President.

Counsel argued that the law was arbitrary and unreasonable without following any safeguard. Exonerating people who had violated the law was a fraud on the Constitution. Mr. Salve would continue his arguments on Wednesday.

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