INDIA BUSINESS WORLD - MAY 2006
THE MONTH THAT WAS...

OFFICE OF PROFIT BILL SENT BACK BY PRESIDENT KALAM

 IN A major embarrassment to the Manmohan Singh government, President A P J Abdul Kalam, on Tuesday, returned the Office of Profit Bill, reports Our Political Bureau from New Delhi. The Rashtrapati Bhawan said there should be a comprehensive criteria which is fair and reasonable, and uniformly applicable to states and UTs.

 “The propriety of making it applicable with retrospective effect should be reassessed,” the President is learnt to have said. This is the first time that President Kalam has returned a Bill. The Bill seeking to denotify 46 offices of profit had said that “these offices would be deemed to have been denotified from 4th day of April, 1959”.

“Leaders like Somnath Chatterjee have been asked to furnish details about the office they hold. Since the law is yet to get the assent of the President, we are still pursuing the cases against them,”.

President A P J Abdul Kalam returning the office of profit bill is seen as a major embarrassment to the Manmohan Singh government.

The development has come as a major setback to 46 leaders who expected relief from the legislation. The beneficiaries of the bill include Mr Somnath Chatterjee, Mr Karan Singh and Mr Amar Singh. It was also expected to benefit Ms Sonia Gandhi as she was expected to take over as NAC chief once again. “We are proceeding according to the law. Leaders like Somnath Chatterjee have been asked to furnish details about the office they hold. Since the law is yet to get the assent of the President, we are still pursuing the cases against them,” officials in the Election Commission said.

The development is not totally unexpected as the Congress leaders themselves were unhappy about the way the law ministry finalised the draft legsilation. It be recalled that the bill seeking to denotify 46 offices of profit had said that “these offices would be deemed to have been denotifed from 4th day of April, 1959.” Incidentally, offices like that of the NAC were constituted only in 2004. The government used the support of the constituents of the UPA to push the Bill during the just-concluded session. The President's concern about the lack of a comprehensive criteria is seen as valid by many constitutional experts. For, the bill which makes offices wakf board in one state as not an office of profit has left the same office in another state as an office of profit. Incidentally, BJP's Arun Jaitley had raised this point during the discussion in the Rajya Sabha. According to him, the law was discriminatory because the government was not exempting a class of offices from the ambit of offices of profit, but some faces.

The objects and reasons of the Bill came close to admitting that the legislation was brought to save a chosen few. Here's a sample. “Recently, it has become necessary to revisit the issue of disqualification of members of Parliament on the basis of holding an office of profit. This has been necessitated due to recent developments where approximately 40 or more members from both Houses of Parliament are holding offices of chairman or members of various statutory and non-statutory bodies and facing disqualification proceedings on the ground that they are holding an office of profit. If this state of affairs is allowed to continue, there is bound to be large-scale litigation and the likely vacation of seats in both the Houses of Parliament which will necessitate the holding of by-election.”