SC seeks Centre's view in Office of Profit law case

The Supreme Court today sought to know the stand of the Centre on referring a petition, challenging the constitutional validity of the amendment to the law on Office of Profit to a Constitution Bench. A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan sought the response from the Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium during the hearing of the case when those opposing the law said the issue should be heard by a larger bench as an important question of law was involved. The ASG, without expressing an opinion on the issue, said that there was already a slew of judgements given by this court on this issue. "It's premature to make any statement and I would put forward my stand at the appropriate time when I would start arguing the case," he replied. Earlier, attacking the Centre for the amendment to the law, senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for Trinamool Congress MP Dinesh Trivedi, contended that it was done with the sole purpose of protecting 55 persons. "Selection of offices to be exempted was not done on the basis criteria evolved by the Joint Committee of the Parliament," Salve said. "The government departed from the well-established constitutional convention to save 55 persons which is arbitrary," he contended. The Bench also pointed out that in that case other similarly-placed parliamentarians would feel discriminated. "Others might say that they are not given similar treatment," the Chief Justice remarked. The two separate petitions filed by Trivedi and an NGO, Consumer Education and Research Society, has challenged Parliament (Prevention of Disqualification) Amendment Act on office of profit alleging that it was passed with retrospective effect solely to protect at that time about 40 sitting members of Parliament. When the law was passed all those members were facing disqualification proceedings before the Election Commission. Salve said the wholly arbitrary and discriminatory Act was passed in undue haste and without seriously addressing any of the concerns raised by the then President A P J Abdul Kalam, who on 31st May, 2006 had returned the Bill to Parliament for reconsideration. The petitions alleged that the Act has been enacted in self-interest and not in public interest as each one of the offices which have been exempted by it have a face behind it. They nearly 45 offices of profit were exempted by the Act with retrospective effect from the year 1959, a large number of them came into existence after that year. At the time of filing of the petitions in August and September 2006, among the 40 MPs, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee held the office of Chairperson of the Santiniketan-Sriniketan Development Board and Samajwadi Party MP Amar Singh held the post of the Chairman of Uttar Pradesh Industrial Development Council. It has been contended that Amendment Act was violative of Article 14, 102(1)(a) and 103 of the Constitution.

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