Show of Dissent ; President Abdul Kalam's Refusal to Give Approval to the Bill Takes the Government by Surprise, Even As the Poll Commission Starts to Gather Information On Nearly 250 Mlas and Mps
Linked as:
Summary
In the past, there have been sporadic skirmishes between the President and the executive. But they mostly happened when the occupant of Rashtrapati Bhavan was a proactive ex-politician like Giani Zail Singh or K.R. Narayanan, who during his tenure on Raisina Hill never tried to hide his hostility towards the BJP-led NDA government. On May 30, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam showed that he too was not a rubber stamp-like Constitutional head by refusing to approve the office-of-profit Bill. It was an unexpected response that sent tremors across the political establishment, especially the ruling Congress and its leftist allies.
The next day, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was left to explain the matter to the President and somehow get his consent for the Prevention of Disqualification (Amendment) Bill 2006. The BJP, which passed a similar bill in Jharkhand last year, accused the Centre of pushing the envelope too far. Armed with support from UPA allies and the Left, the Congress had little to worry about over the questions raised by Kalam while returning the bill to the Government. With 43 members across different parties fearing disqualification from Parliament and 200 others from state legislatures facing a similar fate, there was cross-party pressure on Law Minister H.R. Bharadwaj to hurriedly draft a Bill. Legislative memberships of powerful representatives of the ruling class, including 11 MPs from the Left Front, had been challenged through numerous petitions to the President, and Kalam had taken substantial interest in referring them to the Election Commission (EC) under Article 103(2) of the Constitution.See the full content of this document
Extract
Show of Dissent ; President Abdul Kalam's Refusal to Give Approval to the Bill Takes the Government by Surprise, Even As the Poll Commission Starts to Gather Information On Nearly 250 Mlas and Mps
Over the past few months, the poll panel had been inundated with petitions alleging that party bosses, Union ministers, chief ministers and ordinary MLAs of state Assemblies were guilty of an alternative source of earning despite being elected or nominated. Big names that figured in the petitions inc...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
