New Delhi: On Sunday, 20 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs moved the Delhi high court challenging Election Commission of India’s (ECI) order in the office-of-profit case.
On July 17, the poll panel had dismissed their application for the cross-examination of the petitioner — who sought their disqualification — to prove that they were not holding any office of profit.
“There is no occasion and need for cross-examination of the petitioner as he is not a witness in the present proceedings and the respondents have failed to make out a case for calling any witness,” the order by the Election Commission (EC) read.
The commission had further stated that the factual matrix, which the poll body and high court has taken cognisance of, is drawn on the basis of information that it received from the government of national capital territory of Delhi (GNCTD).
“Moreover, in order to follow the principles of natural justice in letter and spirit, multiple opportunities were accorded to the respondents to offer their comments on these documents. After receipt of these documents, the respondents did not deny or challenge any of the pages from the 2,500 pages of documents received from the GNCTD,” the order said.
The EC’s order also said that the prayer by AAP MLAs to call the GNCTD officers for proving government records and documents, which the latter submitted to the commission, is “nothing, but tactics employed to drag and delay this matter.”
Earlier in January this year, the EC had recommended the disqualification of 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, S.S. Dala, Manoj Kumar, Nitin Tyagi, and Jarnail Singh.
The move reduced AAP’s strength from 66 to 46 in the 70 member Delhi Assembly. The MLAs, appointed as parliamentary secretaries, had challenged their disqualification on grounds of holding offices of profit.
