EC final hearing on July 23

The Election Commission (EC) on Tuesday decided to conduct the final hearing on the disqualification of 20 AAP MLAs in the office of profit case on July 23. The Commission also rejected the AAP MLAs’ plea to cross examine the petitioner Prashant Patel and officials of Delhi assembly and Delhi government on holding of office of profit.

In its 70-page order, the EC said, “There is no occasion and need for the cross-examination of the petitioner as he is not a witness in the present proceedings.” The respondents had also failed to make out a case for calling any witness as pleaded in their applications, it added.

The AAP MLAs had moved the plea on May 16 for cross-examination of petitioner Prashant Patel, and officials of the Assembly and city Government to prove that they were not holding any office-of-profit by being appointed as parliamentary secretaries. 

The Commission has also added that the demand by AAP MLAs to call Delhi Government officers was nothing but tactics employed to drag and delay the matter.

The Commission said the High Court’s direction was very clear and precise, that was “to hear arguments on the most important and seminal issue as to ‘what constitutes an office of profit under the government’ and then re-examine the factual matrix to ascertain if the MLAs had incurred disqualification upon being appointed as parliamentary secretaries”.

“Moreover, in order to follow, Principles of Natural Justice in letter and spirit, multiple opportunities were accorded to the Respondents to offer their comments on these documents. After receipt of these documents the Respondents did not deny or challenge any single page from the 2500 pages of documents received from GNCTD,” the order said.

In the second of round, the EC has so far held six hearings. On the Commission’s recommendation, the President had earlier disqualified the MLAs on office-of-profit charge.

The AAP MLAs had then approached the High Court, which quashed the disqualification notification and granted them relief by ordering further oral EC hearing of arguments.

The EC is hearing afresh the case related to disqualification of 20 AAP MLAs for allegedly holding office-of-profit by virtue of their appointment as parliamentary secretaries.

In January this year, the EC had recommended the disqualification of 20 AAP MLAs — Alka Lamba, Adarsh Shastri, Sanjeev Jha, Rajesh Gupta, Kailash Gahlot, Vijendra Garg, Praveen Kumar, Sharad Kumar, Madan Lal, Shiv Charan Goyal, Sarita Singh, Naresh Yadav, Rajesh Rishi, Anil Kumar, Som Dutt, Avtar Singh, Sukhvir Singh Dala, Manoj Kumar, Nitin Tyagi and Jarnail Singh.