New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party has run allegedly afoul of the law as it decided to field two persons holding posts of chairmen in national commissions in the upcoming Punjab assembly elections. The state assembly laws prohibit people holding an office of profit from contesting elections.
The saffron party had on January 27 fielded its former MP from Hoshiarpur and Dalit leader Vijay Sampla from the Phagwara assembly constituency. However, since Sampla had been holding the post of chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes from February 2021, his candidature came under a cloud.
According to Punjab and Haryana high court advocate and RTI activist Hemant Kumar, the post of chairman of National Commission for SCs is a constitutional post and the law enacted by the Punjab assembly titled Punjab State Legislature (Prevention of Disqualification) Act, 1952 has not exempted those holding such an office of profit from contesting the state assembly polls.
“Therefore it would be interesting to see if before filing his nomination, Sampla had actually resigned from the post of the head of the SC Commission and if such a resignation had actually been accepted by the Union Government before he filed his nomination,” said Kumar.
NCSC chief resigned a day after filing his nomination
In this regard, the advocate said Sampla had on February 1 clarified that just a day after his nomination from Phagwara on January 27, he had tendered his resignation.
“The question is that the affidavit submitted by Sampla along with his nomination clearly states that as on the day of his filing the nomination he was holding the post of Chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes. Also, when I inspected the Union Gazette, I did not find any notification pertaining to the acceptance of Sampla’s resignation,” said the lawyer, adding that this could pose a legal hurdle in Sampla’s contesting the polls.
NCM chief’s resignation acceptance notified after he filed his nomination
The case of the other candidate, Kumar said, chairman of the National Commission for Minorities Iqbal Singh Lalpura who has been fielded by the BJP from Rupnagar, is more or less similar. Singh was made the chairperson of the national panel by the Narendra Modi government in September 2021 and he filed his nomination for the Rupnagar constituency on February 1.
He later told news agency PTI that he had resigned the following day. “I had resigned on January 28. It is mandatory that I resign for contesting these polls,” he was quoted as saying.
However, this may not be the end of the issue for the former Punjab Police Service officer who was also a BJP spokesperson. Kumar said though unlike Sampla, Lalpura did not hold a constitutional post but a legal one, such a post too – in this case being chairperson of NCM – did not come under the category of those exempted from disqualification under the Punjab State Legislature (Prevention of Disqualification) Act, 1952.
Kumar said it was on the night of February 1, after Sampla had filed his nomination, that the Ministry of Minority Affairs issued a gazette notification pertaining to acceptance of his resignation as chairman of NCM. “The process of scrutiny of nominations ends on February 2 and the last date for withdrawal of nominations for Punjab polls is February 4,” said Kumar, adding that ideally the candidate’s nomination should happen only after he had demitted an office of profit.
Ahead of WB polls, BJP had faced another ticklish situation
For the BJP, such close calls should ring a bell. The party, which has been in power at the Centre for seven years now, appears still struggling to come to terms with the laws of the land.
Even ahead of the assembly elections in West Bengal, it had faced a similar peculiar situation when it fielded its nominated Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta from Tarakeshwar seat without having him resign beforehand from the Upper House. All India Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra had called for his disqualification from the upper house in accordance with the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution of India.
She had tweeted that, “A nominated member of a House shall be disqualified for being a member of the House if he joins any political party after the expiry of six months from the date on which he takes his seat after complying with the requirements of article 99, or, as the case may be, article 188.” Dasgupta had subsequently resigned from the post. But after he lost the assembly election from Tarakeshwar, the BJP government renominated him to the Upper House.