From Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI: Former Lok Sabha Speaker Purno A Sangma on Tuesday moved the Supreme Court challenging Pranab Mukherjee’s election as the President of India, and claimed Mukherjee held an office of profit when he filed his nomination papers.
The petition, filed by Sangma, has contended that Mukherjee was holding the offices of profit as the chairman of Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata and was also the leader of the Congress party in Lok Sabha when he had entered the Presidential race.
Sangma, who lost the Presidential poll, has sought a direction for setting aside Mukherjee’s election as the President and declaring him as elected to the post.
“That the very act of bringing the said two offices — Chairman of ISI Council and leader of legislative party of Congress in Lok Sabha — under the purview of the Parliament (Prevention of Disqualification) Act, 1959 is in itself sufficient declaration that both these are offices of profit.
“Even otherwise, the facilities to which the holder of these two offices are entitled, the nature of functions of these two offices as well as the incompatibility and conflict of interest of these two offices with the office of President of India makes it absolutely clear that they are, in fact, offices of profit,” the petition said.
Mukherjee’s election as President is “illegal, void ab-initio and liable to be set aside,” Sangma’s petition settled by BJP leaders and senior counsel Ram Jethmalani and Satpal Jain, said.
Sangma’s petition is not the first of its kind as in the past on several occasions Presidential elections have been challenged in the apex court and the one in which a detail hearing took place was the plea against election of V V Giri as President in 1969.
Backed by Indira Gandhi, Giri had won the Presidential election as an independent candidate by defeating the official Congress nominee Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy by a conscience vote.
A petition was filed in the Supreme Court seeking to set aside Giri’s election on the ground of use of corrupt practices to influence voters which was dismissed on September 14, 1970 after a marathon hearing in which a large number of politicians were called to depose as witness by a five-judge Constitution Bench.
Giri was given the option to give his statement to the court-appointed commissioner but he preferred to depose in person before the apex court.
In his petition, Sangma, whose objections against the nomination of Mukherjee, was rejected by the Returning Officer, has submitted that the apex court should summon entire records relating to the case and hold a trial before deciding the issues raised in the petition.
The petition by Sangma, who resigned from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) for contesting the Presidential election, said that among the several objections, the Returning Officer did not decide the issue regarding the genuineness of the signatures on the purported resignation letter of Mukherjee from the post of Chairman of Indian Statistical Institute. Further, the tribal leader, said that on July 3 he and Mukherjee were declared to be the only two duly nominated candidates for the Presidential election and Congress leader’s name was deleted from the website of the Institute late in the afternoon on July 2, soon after the adjournment of the proceedings before the Returning Officer.
In the presidential poll, Mukherjee, who got 69.31 per cent votes, defeated Sangma, who could master only 30.69 per cent of the total votes.
Sangma’s petition as per the Supreme Court rules is likely to be placed before a Bench of the Court of not less than five judges for further proceedings.
The petition was filed by way of an election petition filed under Section 17 and 18 of the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election Act, 1952.