Members of Parliament:

· It is no longer essential. He has to be an elector in a parliamentary constituency anywhere in India.

· Some elected members do not qualify to sit in the house. A Rajya Sabha member has to be ‘ordinarily resident’ of the state which returns him or her to the house. Keeping this in view, the Supreme Court should have thrown out the act nearly 10 years ago when it was first challenged. Instead, the court persisted with the mistake.

· Subsequently, the bench sought to spell out the qualification for election. In its wisdom it did away with the domicile qualification for the candidates contesting for the Rajya Sabha. The qualification says that a member has to be ordinarily living in the state from where he seeks election.

· The nub of the problem is that political parties wanted to do away with the domicile clause so that they could send their favourite to the Rajya Sabha even though he or she did not belong to the State or lived there.

· Unfortunately, Parliament substituted the word, India, in place of State. This made little sense because no person other than Indian could be elected. The Supreme Court should have restored the domicile clause but it went along with the interpretation that did away with the domicile requirement.

Source: UPSC PYQ