The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed the plea of former Lok Sabha Speaker P.A. Sangma challenging the election of senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee as President. A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir gave a 3 to 2 majority ruling holding that Mr Sangma’s petition does not have “substance” to be put up for regular hearing. The bench had earlier heard preliminary arguments on the issue of maintainability of the election petition. The dissenting judges — justices J. Chelameswar and Ranjan Gogoi — held that the petition deserves regular hearing with one of them noting that it was alleged that Mr Mukherjee was holding an office of profit when he filed his nomination papers. CJI Kabir and Justices P. Sathasivam and S.S. Nijjar, however, dismissed the petition calling it unfit for regular hearing. The two dissenting orders were pronounced separately by the bench. Justice Chelameswar, who read out the operative portion of his order dissenting with the order read out by the CJI, said he will give the reasons for dissenting with majority order shortly next week. Justice Gogoi said since it was alleged that Mr Mukherjee was holding the office of profit as the chairman of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata, he is of the view that the election petition filed by Mr Sangma was fit to deserve regular hearing. Earlier, the court had taken on record the short affidavit filed by President Mukherjee, who said the grounds for challenging his election was “ex facie misconceived.” Mr Sangma has contended that Mr Mukherjee was holding offices of profit as chairman ISI, Kolkata and as also the leader of the Congress Party in Lok Sabha when he had entered the presidential race. Earlier, the attorney-general had opposed the plea of Mr Sangma on the issue of office of profit. “An office of profit is an office which must be under the government, which enjoys the power to appoint and remove and some salary or emoluments must be attached to the post,” attorney general G.E. Vahanvati said, adding that this was not the case with the post of chairperson of Indian Statistical Institute (ISI).
