New Delhi: Opposition candidate P A Sangma on Monday sought to put a spanner in UPA nominee Pranab Mukherjee’s Presidential bid by claiming violation under Office of Profit rules, prompting postponement of scrutiny of nominations till Tuesday even though the government rejected the charges.
Some objections, like anomalies in the list of proposers and seconders, were also raised on Sangma’s candidature as well by a few of the 86 applicants who have filed nominations for the July 19 poll, sources said.
Sangma demanded rejection of Mukherjee’s nomination under the Office of Profit rules, claiming that Mukherjee was the Chairman of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI).
Sangma’s lawyer Satpal Jain raised the objection over Mukherjee’s candidature before Rajya Sabha Secretary General V K Agnihotri, who is the Returning Officer for the Presidential election, when scrutiny of nominations was underway on Monday afternoon.
In view of questions being raised over the candidature of the Mukherjee and Sangma, the process of scrutiny was deferred till Tuesday to give them opportunity to respond formally.
With regard to objections to Mukherjee’s candidature, the government was quick to reject Sangma’s claim, saying he had resigned from the post of Chairman of ISI days before filing nomination papers for the July 19 Presidential poll.
“He (Mukherjee) had resigned as Chairman, ISI, on June 20, a week before he filed his nominations (on June 28),” Parliamentary Affairs Minister P K Bansal told PTI.
Bansal, the authorised representative of Mukherjee, said he and Home Minister P Chidambaram met Mukherjee after Sangma’s claim and they were told by him of his resignation well in advance of filing the nomination.
He said Sangma’s claim was factually incorrect, legally ill-conceived and untenable.
“Pranab Mukherjee would be filing a written reply to the Returning Officer by 3 PM tomorrow,” Bansal said.
Bansal said there were some objections to the candidature of both Mukherjee and Sangma when the nominations were taken up for scrutiny by Agnihotri.
He said the parties concerned and the Returning Officer required time for deciding on the objections raised during the process of scrutiny of the nominations.
Sources said that Sangma has been asked to file a reply to the objections to his candidature and Mukherjee has been asked to submit his reply by 2 pm.
The Returning Officer is expected to hear both the sides at 3:00 p.m. and give his decision thereafter. Most of the objections to Sangma relate to the names and signatures of proposers and seconders not being in order.
Some of such objections have been raised against Mukherjee as well. While Sangma himself was present in the office of the Returning Officer when the nomination papers were taken up for scrutiny, Mukherjee was represented by Bansal, Chidambaram and lawyer Pravin Parik.
Many of the 86 applicants who had filed nomination papers for the July 19 elections were also present.
Sources said the Returning Officer has the powers to postpone the scrutiny of nomination papers under the Presidential and Vice Presidential Elections Act, 1952. BJP spokesman Ravi Shanker Prasad claimed that as per the “information” available with his party, Mukherjee had not resigned from the post of ISI Chairman.
He said the Lok Sabha Secretariat website and ISI website showed till 11:00 AM today that Mukherjee was ISI Chairman. (PTI)