The Election Commission (EC) on Wednesday issued a show cause notice to 27 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislators on the basis of a fresh petition seeking their disqualification from the Delhi Assembly for allegedly holding offices of profit.
The MLAs in question have been asked to file their response by November 11 even as the EC said that it would commence final arguments four days later — from November 15 — on an earlier petition seeking disqualification of 21 AAP legislators.
Apart from the 21 AAP MLAs, against whom the EC is already considering a plea for holding posts of parliamentary secretaries which petitioners have argued constitute an office of profit, the six additional AAP legislators include Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel, his incumbent deputy Rakhi Birla, former deputy speaker Bandana Kumari and “rebel” AAP MLA and current Swaraj Abhiyan leader Pankaj Pushkar.
Fresh petition
The fresh petition, filed in June and forwarded to the EC by the Rashtrapati Bhawan last month, sought the cancellation of the membership of 27 AAP MLAs over the office-of-profit case. The petitioner behind the plea claimed that the MLAs held posts of chairpersons of Rogi Kalyan Samitis (RKSs) of different government hospitals in Delhi “without any sanctity of law”.
A senior government official said that RKS’s were set up by the former Sheila Dikshit government on October 5, 2009, and added that the complaint would “fall flat”.
On September 8 this year, the Delhi High Court had set aside the appointment of 21 AAP MLAs as parliamentary secretaries given that the order to appoint them was without the concurrence of the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi.
