Press Statement issued by Shri L.K. Advani

Leader of the Opposition (Lok Sabha)
In Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh) on April 26, 2006

The second half of the Budget session of Parliament will commence on May 10. The government had to retrace its step of adjourning Parliament sine die after its fiasco over proposed ordinance to save Congress president Shrimati Sonia Gandhi from certain disqualification on account of her holding an "office of profit - namely, chairpersonship of the National Advisory Council. Left with no alternative, she resigned from her NAC post and also from Parliament. While no one disputes her right to seek re-election to the Lok Sabha, the Congress party’s propaganda to project her resignation as "another great act of sacrifice" has been shown to be what it is - pure propaganda.

The fact that the NAC has not been disbanded makes us suspicious that the government intends to re-appoint Smt. Sonia Gandhi as its chairperson. The BJP has all along been of the view that the NAC is an unnecessary and extra-constitutional body, which was created solely to provide a cover for the Congress president to exercise power without any accountability in the Union government. It also weakened and downgraded the high constitutional office of the Prime Minister.

The Congress party's apologists have argued that NAC is needed to review and monitor the implementation of the Common Minimum Programme. I believe that this function can be easily conducted by the PMO itself. Indeed, it is the duty of the Prime Minister, and not of any other nominee of the PM, to review and monitor how his government has been functioning.

I therefore urge Dr. Manmohan Singh to restore the authority and dignity to the august office he occupies by immediately disbanding the NAC.

With barely a fortnight left for Parliament’s Budget session to re-commence, I am disappointed that the government has not taken either the people into confidence on what kind of bill it proposes to introduce on the "office of profit" issue. The opposition can make its views known only after the government shares with us its thinking on the proposed legislation. Since the duration of the second half of the Budget session is short, I urge the Prime Minister to make his mind known on this important issue.

As far as the BJP is concerned, I would like to make it clear that the proposed legislation on the "office of profit" issue should not in any way undermine the rationale and logic evolved by the makers of the Constitution in Articles 102 and 103 (and Articles 191 and 192 which are applicable to Members of State Legislatures). In other words, the government should not take the easy way out by simply exempting a long list of offices from the category of "offices of profit" and thereby release them from the purview of the constitutional provisions attracting disqualification.

The Drafting Committee of the Constitution, which included luminaries like Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyer, K.M.Munshi and others, had set aside the "elaborate enumeration" of all the circumstances which would disqualify a person from being a Member of Parliament that had been prepared by the constitutional advisor, B.N. Rau. Instead, it adopted a simple but generalised five-point formula as it stands in Article 102. The spirit behind this formula is that private profit or gain must not be permitted in the name of public service. Secondly, it seeks to ensure that MPs and MLAs remain devoted to parliamentary and legislative work, since those having offices of profit are not supposed to have enough time for Parliament work.