New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday refused to stay the Centre’s notification disqualifying 20 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs to hold the post of profits.
The court barred the Election Commission (EC) from announcing any “measures” to declare the dates of by-elections for the seats of 20 disqualified candidates from the Delhi Legislative Assembly for the offices of profit for their next hearing on January 29. Apart from this, the Delhi High Court had ordered the EC – which had declared 20 AAP legislators disqualified last week – on this issue to answer it on February 6.
The Eight legislators led by Arvind Kejriwal had filed three petitions that the Election Commission had recommended to disqualify the President and the notification issued after President Ramnath Kovind signed off on it be cancelled.
The MLAs have alleged that the Election Commission had recommended their disqualification without giving them the right opportunity to defend themselves and asked the court to order the election board to hear from them. They also demanded that the Election Commission should reversed disqualified till the hearing again.
The Five candidates from the former Aam Aadmi Party, in their petition, argued that the Election Commission has worked in “unfair haste” and without the “support” and “providing opportunities for fair hearing to the petitioners. The legislators further argued that EC “failed to follow the proper procedure of law by not giving full hearing to the petitioners before giving final opinion to the President” Also, the EC did not accept that “Parliamentary Secretary” was a “post only” And there was no ‘office’.
The Aam Aadmi Party emphasized that their MLAs have not taken any wages or benefits in the form of parliamentary secretaries, who have been appointed to assist the Ministers with their work, and therefore there is no question of their office of profit Not there. the Court intervention means that the speaker of Delhi Assembly should not take action on the President’s order so that your MLAs are declared disqualified. The EC may move the Supreme Court against the order of Delhi High Court.
The Disqualification of MLAs will mean that elections for 20 seats in Delhi will be required. This will not affect the Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s government, even if the Aam Aadmi Party is defeated of all the 20 seats, because there is a majority with 66 seats in the 70 seats in the assembly. Immediately after securing majority in Delhi Assembly elections, AAP has appointed 21 in Parliament as secretaries of 21 legislators in 2015. One of the 21 legislators, Jarnail Singh, had already resigned.
The elected MLAs include Alka Lamba, Adarsh Shastri, Madan Lal Khufiya, Shiv Charan Goyal, Sarita Singh, Sanjeev Jha, Rajesh Gupta, Kailash Gehlot, Vijendra Garg, Praveen Kumar, Sharad Kumar, Naresh Yadav, Rajesh Rishi, Anil Kumar, Som Dutt, Avtar Singh, Sukhvir Singh Dala, Manoj Kumar, Nitin Tyagi and Anil Kumar.
