The court was hearing the plea by AAP MLAs, including law minister Kailash Gahlot, who sought clarification of the High Court’s March 23 decision.
The Delhi High Court Thursday said that AAP MLAs cannot force the Election Commission (EC) to cross-examine the person who accused them of holding office-of-profit for their appointment as parliamentary secretaries in the Delhi government.
A bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Chander Shekhar said the onus to prove that the MLAs were holding office-of-profit lies on the EC, and the legislators cannot say that they will cross-examine the complainant. “As per the legal position, you cannot force EC to call Prashant Patel (complainant) and cross-examine him. The controversy is very limited. The EC is not relying on the complaint of the complainant, it was relying on the documents,” the bench observed.
Senior advocate K V Viswanathan, appearing for one of the AAP MLAs, said the MLAs should be allowed to cross-examine advocate Patel and Delhi government officials. The counsel said that they wanted to call the secretary-general of the Legislative Assembly and the officers concerned from Administration Department, Accounts, and Ministry of Law as witnesses to prove that the MLAs were not holding office-of-profit.
Senior advocate Arvind Nigam, appearing for the poll panel, opposed the submission, saying that there was no dispute with regard to the credibility of the documents, and that this was a pure case of interpretation of documents. The arguments in the matter remained inconclusive and will resume on August 9.
The AAP MLAs had challenged the EC’s July 17 order, wherein their plea to cross-examine a petitioner who sought their disqualification, was rejected. The court was hearing the plea by AAP MLAs, including law minister Kailash Gahlot, who sought clarification of the High Court’s March 23 decision.
Earlier this year, a division bench had set aside the EC’s decision disqualifying 20 AAP MLAs for holding office-of-profit. The HC had termed the EC’s recommendation as “vitiated” and “bad in law”, and directed it to hear the issue afresh.