Office of profit: EC to hear plea on July 14

NEW DELHI: The Commission has summoned 21 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs appointed as parliamentary secretaries by the Delhi government for a hearing on the petition seeking their disqualification on the ground of holding office of profit.
"ECI has fixed July 14 for hearing 21 AAP MLAs in office of profit case," the Commission said on Monday. According to an EC official, the AAP MLAs may decide whether they want to be represented by individual lawyers or have a common lawyer engaged by the party to argue on their behalf.
The poll panel had earlier sought replies of the 21 AAP legislators on the disqualification petition filed by lawyer Prashant Patel. TNN
Incidentally, the hearing comes days after President Pranab Mukherjee declined assent to a bill passed by the Delhi assembly last year, seeking to exempt the post of 21 parliamentary secretaries from the purview of "office of profit". The President reportedly went by the law ministry's opinion that the appointees were de facto ministers and, taken with regular ministers, exceeded the rule that the council of ministers cannot exceed 10% of the strength of the assembly in Delhi .
Delhi CM and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, however, maintains that that none of the 21 MLAs are drawing any salary of perks as a parliamentary secretary, and hence the post cannot be deemed as "office of profit".
Though the rejection of the Delhi Members of Legislative Assembly (Removal of Disqualification) Amendment Bill, 2015 has in effect brought the post of parliamentary secretaries held by the 21 AAP MLAs under the ambit of 'office of profit', only EC is competent to recommend to the President to disqualify an MLA/MP. The disqualification proceedings usually take a minimum 3-4 months, as EC holds a quasi-judicial hearing to allow the MLA/MP to put forth his clarification on allegations.