{"id":30371,"date":"2018-10-26T15:36:59","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T10:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=30371"},"modified":"2018-10-26T15:36:59","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T10:06:59","slug":"office-of-profit-issue-delhi-hc-reinstates-20-aap-mlas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/office-of-profit-issue-delhi-hc-reinstates-20-aap-mlas\/","title":{"rendered":"Office-of-profit issue: Delhi HC reinstates 20 AAP MLAs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/todays-paper\/office-of-profit-issue-delhi-hc-reinstates-20-aap-mlas\/article23338199.ece\"><strong>Office-of-profit issue: Delhi HC reinstates 20 AAP MLAs<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>What has happened?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Delhi High Court on Friday quashed a notification issued by President Ram Nath Kovind disqualifying 20 AAP MLAs for holding offices of profit as Parliamentary Secretaries.<\/p>\n<p><strong>HC Observed<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The opinion of the Election Commission of India to the President to disqualify the legislators was \u201cvitiated and bad in law for failure to comply with the principles of natural justice\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Arguments by the Court<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>EC Failed to give oral hearing to MLAs<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The High Court noted that the poll panel failed to give oral hearing and opportunity to address arguments on merits to the AAP MLAs before arriving at its opinion that they held \u2018office of profit\u2019.<\/p>\n<p><strong>HC order to EC<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>What is meant by office of profit held under the government:<\/strong> It remanded the matter back to the Election Commission to first decide the \u201call important and seminal issue; what is meant by the expression \u2018office of profit held under the government\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Re-examine the factual matrix: <\/strong>The court told the poll panel to then \u201cre-examine the factual matrix to decide whether the petitioners (MLAs) had incurred disqualification on appointment as Parliamentary Secretaries, without being influenced by the earlier order or observations on the said aspect in this order\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Controversial clause<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Delhi government, led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, appointed the parliamentary secretaries attached to government ministries after coming to power in March 2015.<\/li>\n<li>However, a constitutional clause prohibits legislators or parliamentarians from holding any position with monetary or other benefits. Known as \u2018office of profit\u2019, the clause is aimed at reducing conflict of interest situations for public representatives.<\/li>\n<li>The government had claimed that the appointments would facilitate a smooth functioning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Office-of-profit issue: Delhi HC reinstates 20 AAP MLAs What has happened? The Delhi High Court on Friday quashed a notification issued by President Ram Nath Kovind disqualifying 20 AAP MLAs for holding offices of profit as Parliamentary Secretaries. HC Observed The opinion of the Election Commission of India to the President to disqualify the legislators&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/office-of-profit-issue-delhi-hc-reinstates-20-aap-mlas\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Office-of-profit issue: Delhi HC reinstates 20 AAP MLAs<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704796017},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}