Delhi HC Sets Aside EC's Recommendation On AAP MLAs In Office For Profit Case

The Delhi High Court has put on hold the Election Commission's recommendation to  disqualify 20 lawmakers of the Aam Aadmi Party in the office of profit case. 

In a big relief for the party,  the EC will now re-hear the pleas of the MLAs in the case. 

"MLAs were not given a chance to put their point, so now the court has given them a chance to do that. The EC will hear their plea again," Saurabh Bhardwaj, AAP party said.

The court was hearing the plea of 20 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs challenging their disqualification for holding office-of-profit when they were appointed parliamentary secretaries.

The Court said violation of oral hearing norms by EC and failure to communicate that OP Rawat after recusing had rejoined proceedings were the reasons to quash the Jan 19 order, reported news agency ANI. 

Terming the Election Commission's recommendation on disqualification as "vitiated", the bench said that there was violation of natural justice and no oral hearing was given to the MLAs before disqualifying them as legislators of the Delhi Assembly.

"Opinion of Election Commission of India (given to the President of India) dated January 19, 2018, is vitiated and bad in law for failure to comply with principles of natural justice," the court said.

It asked the EC to "re-examine the factual matrix to decide whether the petitioners (AAP 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.

The judgement was read out by justice Sanjiv Khanna in a jam-packed courtroom, after which the jubilant AAP MLAs, who were present there, congratulated each other.

The MLAs, who were appointed parliamentary secretaries, had challenged their disqualification for holding office-of-profit.

During the arguments, the MLAs had requested the court to remand their case back to the poll panel with a direction to hear the matter afresh. They had approached the high court challenging their disqualification after President Ram Nath Kovind gave his assent to the EC's recommendation.

Backing its recommendation to the President for AAP MLAs' disqualification, the poll panel had submitted that the legislators cannot claim that they were not holding office-of-profit. It had also claimed that their pleas were not maintainable and were liable to be dismissed.

The MLAs are accused of holding offices of profit, as they were appointed parliamentary secretaries to ministers in the Delhi government in March 2015. This was soon after they were elected to the Delhi Assembly. In September 2016, the Delhi High Court had ruled against their appointment as parliamentary secretaries, after hearing their pleas on a daily basis since February 7.

The high court had on January 24 refused to stay the Centre's notification disqualifying them, but had restrained the poll panel from taking any "precipitate measures" such as announcing dates for by polls to fill the vacancies.

The EC had on January 19 recommended the disqualification of 20 AAP MLAs - Alka Lamba, Adarsh Shastri, Sanjeev Jha, Rajesh Gupta, Kailash Gahlot, Vijendra Garg, Praveen Kumar, Sharad Kumar, Madan Lal, Shiv Charan Goyal, Sarita Singh, Naresh Yadav, Rajesh Rishi, Anil Kumar, Som Dutt, Avtar Singh, Sukhvir Singh Dala, Manoj Kumar, Nitin Tyagi and Jarnail Singh.

The president had accepted the EC's opinion the next day.

(Agencies)