The AAP government’s decision to appoint 21 MLAs as parliamentary secretaries has been rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee. The party has put the blame on Delhi’s lieutenant governor. There seems little substance in the Kejriwal government’s attack on the Centre. The President has refused to give assent to the amended Delhi Members of Legislative Assembly (Removal of Disqualification) Act 1997. The amendment was brought in to protect the Delhi government’s appointments. It feared that the post of the parliamentary secretary could be regarded as an office of profit. That could disqualify the MLAs in question. Previous court judgments had declared such appointments as unconstitutional. Some earlier Delhi governments had made such appointments. But that does not validate the Kejriwal government’s stand. The AAP had always held it was more scrupulous than others. The Constitution has the threat of disqualification. The office of parliamentary secretary is not an exempted post from the risk of disqualification on grounds of being an ‘office of profit’. The AAP government did say that the parliamentary secretaries appointed would not be eligible to remuneration or perquisites of any kind. That did not include use of government transport for official purposes and office space. Later it wanted the posts to be exempted altogether.
If legislators become aides to the ministers, that undermines separation of powers between the legislature and the executive and upsets the system of checks and balances. That makes the AAP’s case unsustainable. Maybe, the appointments may improve governance. But that should be made within the constitutional framework.