People's Democracy

EDITORIAL 

Office of Profit: Parliament Should Prevail

THE president’s returning the Parliament (Prevention of Disqualification) Amendment Bill 2006 to parliament for reconsideration, has sparked off another round of debate on the issue of legislators and office of profit. The stand taken by the CPI(M) is being subjected to another round of attack. The CPI(M)’s stand that parliament should adopt the bill again and send it to the president as per Article 111 of the Constitution is being pilloried as a crass move to protect its MPs “who are guilty of holding offices of profit”. The Indian Express goes to the extent of accusing the Party of attacking the Election Commission and the president to protect the offices of profit of its MPs. Some like Kuldip Nayar have pontificated that the Left is being immoral in wanting parliament to legislate to protect its MPs.  

What is the truth? First of all, there is a lot of uninformed comment and plain nonsense being said about the office of profit issue. Every non-legislative post is not an office of profit. Secondly, under the Constitution it is the basic right of parliament to decide which posts to exempt from the purview of disqualification. As an earlier editorial in this paper pointed out, this is a right conferred under Article 102. It is true that the Constitution does not define what is an office of profit, but what is clear is that only parliament has the right to make a law to exempt members of parliament from disqualification for holding an office of profit. 
  
The Prevention of Disqualification Act of 1959 was enacted to provide this mechanism to exempt persons from holding what are deemed as offices of profit. It is the periodic amendment of this Act which is required so that MPs can continue to hold non-legislative offices. 
  
As for defining what is an office of profit, that lacuna exists because it has not been done in the Constitution. That is why the CPI(M) wants parliament to set up a committee to consider the matter in depth and come out with recommendations which can be the basis for a legislation on the matter. Till then, the only recourse is for parliament to amend the Prevention of Disqualification Act which provides list of the exempted offices. 
  
There is a lot of obfuscation in the media about legislation with retrospective effect. There is a verdict by a five member bench of the Supreme Court more than three decades ago which upheld the right of legislature to pass retrospective law to exempt from disqualification. This arose from a case about the Rajasthan legislature passing an act removing disqualification with retrospective effect in 1968. Moreover, there can be no uniformity between the parliament and the state legislatures as the state legislatures are empowered to legislate on the subject concerning its members. The president’s query in this regard seems misplaced as this goes against the federal arrangement.   

The CPI(M) rejects the idea that MPs should not hold any post which is in the realm of public service. A member of parliament heading a development authority in his or her area is inherently preferable to a bureaucrat doing so. Bodies which deal with the livelihood and occupation of weavers, artisans and so on can be better led by people’s representatives with the execution of decisions being left to the civil servants.   
It is absurd for the detractors of the Left to accuse the CPI(M) of “wanting to cling to offices" or acting in a manner to prevent its MPs being unseated. As for the first charge, the MPs of the CPI(M) far from benefiting from the so-called offices of profit, are known to donate their salaries and allowances to the Party and draw a limited allowance. The CPI(M) does not permit its MPs to decide on how to use the MPLADS funds. This is decided by the Party committees wherever necessary in consultation with the zilla parishad and local bodies. The positions occupied by the MPs have been decided by the Party so that the development needs or bodies set up to serve the requirements of special categories of people are met. To call such service as “office of profit” is untenable.   

As for the CPI(M) being anxious to protect its MPs seats, this is the least cause of concern. Everyone knows the mass base of the Party in West Bengal is such that getting these MPs re-elected is not a worry.  In fact the only concern would be the unnecessary expenses of another poll. 
  
The CPI(M) is not apologetic about its criticism of the Election Commission either, in the way it has handled the complaint from a Trinamul Congress leader about CPI(M) MPs holding offices of profit. Instead of dismissing the complaint in limine (at the start), the Commission has taken the unprecedented step of asking the complainant to provide additional information to substantiate his complaint. This solicitous treatment for the Trinamul Congress complaint is in line with how the Commission gave preferential treatment to each and every complaint by the Trinamul Congress during the recently held West Bengal assembly elections. To keep on its website for over two months a patently false complaint that the speaker of the Lok Sabha is chairman of the Asiatic Society, or to list a non-governmental organisation headed by Nilotpal Basu as an alleged office of profit, without dismissing these outright, certainly invites criticism and raises credible questions on how the Commission has handled the petition forwarded by the president. 
  
The farce of the BJP vehemently opposing the legislation passed by parliament after having done the same thing in Jharkhand has only exposed its pettifogging opportunism. 
  
Let parliament meet and exercise its prerogative in the matter again.