03-24-2006, 03:26 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Why not resign on 22nd? Why shut Parliament?</b>Â [/url]
The story is simple. Sacking Jaya Bachchan has cost Sonia her Lok Sabha membership and also position as Chairperson of National Advisory Council (NAC). By resigning Sonia has avoided for her what happened to Jaya Bachchan, but not before attempting to overturn the law to prevent it.
The story started with an obscure Congressman from UP complaining to President APJ Abdul Kalam against Jaya Bachchan, once a close family friend of Sonia. His grouse was that Jayaâs position as Chairperson of UP Film Development Board, a state government body, was an office of profit under the electoral laws.
Under the law, a member of either House of Parliament, holding an office of profit under any government, will be disqualified. So, the plea was that Jaya Bachchan should be removed from Rajya Sabha. The President sent the complaint to the Election Commission which upheld the complaint and recommended to the President for Jayaâs removal from RS. The President forthwith removed her from the House.
There is a personal and political background to the anti-Jaya move. Jaya Bachchan was a target of Sonia Gandhiâs wrath ever since she charged Sonia family with betraying her family. Understandably Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya had attracted Soniaâs special attention. Also in 1998, Amar Singh and Mulayam Singh exposed Soniaâs famous lie about 272 MPs supporting her and thus spiked her plans to become the Prime Minister. So they were quite âspecialâ to her for that reason too.
When the petitioner succeeded against Jaya, Sonia must have gloated over. But, before even the smile on her face wore off the missile fired at Jaya turned against Sonia herself. How?
After Jaya was removed from RS, some 40-odd Opposition MPs moved the President seeking to remove Sonia and three others from Parliament for the very reason Jaya lost her RS membership â that is, they were also holding offices of profit. They told the President that as Sonia is the chairman of the NAC, she is also guilty of breach of electoral laws.
Structurally the NAC is constituted as the super power in the hierarchy along with the Prime Ministerâs Office. The budgetary provision for the NAC is included in the budget for the PMO, via the Cabinet Secretariat, to assert the status of NAC as on a par with the PMO and Sonia on a par with, if not higher than, Manmohan Singh. Chidambaramâs budget for 2006-07 provides Rs 4 crore for the NAC in the budget for the PMO.
The budgetary ranking of NAC on a par with the PMO only confirms the political reality as a fact of governance too. It was on this ground that the 40-odd MPs had petitioned the President for similar action on Sonia as against Jaya.
Now starts the panic, and the desperate attempts to save Sonia, breaking and bending the Constitution. The attempt was clearly to maim the Constitution to save Sonia. The Constitutional convention is that after the budget is passed the two Houses are adjourned to meet on a predetermined date, that is, on May 10 as per this yearâs schedule. But, on March 22, surprisingly the government asked not for just adjournment of the House as per the convention, but for adjournment âsine dieâ.
Adjournment âsine dieâ is indefinite adjournment, not saying when the House will reassemble. This strategy was evolved for a hidden purpose. Under the Constitution only when a House is adjourned indefinitely, the Prime Minister can ask the President to âprorogueâ the Houses â to prorogue means to keep the houses suspended.
Only if the Houses remain suspended, not merely adjourned, the government can issue ordinances. After declaring the date of reassembling of the House as May 10, when the government asked for indefinite adjournment, the Opposition realised the mischief. The government was deliberately shutting down the Parliament to bring an ordinance to declare by law that Soniaâs position as chairperson of NAC is not an office of profit. The Constitution authorises the government to issue an ordinance when the Parliament is shut; but not to shut the Parliament to issue the ordinance.
But Dr Singh shut down the Parliament so that government could issue ordinance so save Sonia from the fate that her UPA Government inflicted on Jaya Bachchan.
<b>She resigns, not before all this. That is, she resigns after the strategy of the government to bail her out by an unconstitutional law got exposed. Why resign after the exposure? Why not a day earlier â on March 22 â so that the Parliament would not have been shut? Why the last minute resignation? The fear that the President might have sent the complaint against Sonia to the Election Commission before the government sent the ordinance to him? Or the fear that the President might not sign the ordinance forthwith and sit on it till the pending cases like Jayaâs, including Soniaâs, are decided? The last minute resignation conceals the obvious</b>Â <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The story is simple. Sacking Jaya Bachchan has cost Sonia her Lok Sabha membership and also position as Chairperson of National Advisory Council (NAC). By resigning Sonia has avoided for her what happened to Jaya Bachchan, but not before attempting to overturn the law to prevent it.
The story started with an obscure Congressman from UP complaining to President APJ Abdul Kalam against Jaya Bachchan, once a close family friend of Sonia. His grouse was that Jayaâs position as Chairperson of UP Film Development Board, a state government body, was an office of profit under the electoral laws.
Under the law, a member of either House of Parliament, holding an office of profit under any government, will be disqualified. So, the plea was that Jaya Bachchan should be removed from Rajya Sabha. The President sent the complaint to the Election Commission which upheld the complaint and recommended to the President for Jayaâs removal from RS. The President forthwith removed her from the House.
There is a personal and political background to the anti-Jaya move. Jaya Bachchan was a target of Sonia Gandhiâs wrath ever since she charged Sonia family with betraying her family. Understandably Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya had attracted Soniaâs special attention. Also in 1998, Amar Singh and Mulayam Singh exposed Soniaâs famous lie about 272 MPs supporting her and thus spiked her plans to become the Prime Minister. So they were quite âspecialâ to her for that reason too.
When the petitioner succeeded against Jaya, Sonia must have gloated over. But, before even the smile on her face wore off the missile fired at Jaya turned against Sonia herself. How?
After Jaya was removed from RS, some 40-odd Opposition MPs moved the President seeking to remove Sonia and three others from Parliament for the very reason Jaya lost her RS membership â that is, they were also holding offices of profit. They told the President that as Sonia is the chairman of the NAC, she is also guilty of breach of electoral laws.
Structurally the NAC is constituted as the super power in the hierarchy along with the Prime Ministerâs Office. The budgetary provision for the NAC is included in the budget for the PMO, via the Cabinet Secretariat, to assert the status of NAC as on a par with the PMO and Sonia on a par with, if not higher than, Manmohan Singh. Chidambaramâs budget for 2006-07 provides Rs 4 crore for the NAC in the budget for the PMO.
The budgetary ranking of NAC on a par with the PMO only confirms the political reality as a fact of governance too. It was on this ground that the 40-odd MPs had petitioned the President for similar action on Sonia as against Jaya.
Now starts the panic, and the desperate attempts to save Sonia, breaking and bending the Constitution. The attempt was clearly to maim the Constitution to save Sonia. The Constitutional convention is that after the budget is passed the two Houses are adjourned to meet on a predetermined date, that is, on May 10 as per this yearâs schedule. But, on March 22, surprisingly the government asked not for just adjournment of the House as per the convention, but for adjournment âsine dieâ.
Adjournment âsine dieâ is indefinite adjournment, not saying when the House will reassemble. This strategy was evolved for a hidden purpose. Under the Constitution only when a House is adjourned indefinitely, the Prime Minister can ask the President to âprorogueâ the Houses â to prorogue means to keep the houses suspended.
Only if the Houses remain suspended, not merely adjourned, the government can issue ordinances. After declaring the date of reassembling of the House as May 10, when the government asked for indefinite adjournment, the Opposition realised the mischief. The government was deliberately shutting down the Parliament to bring an ordinance to declare by law that Soniaâs position as chairperson of NAC is not an office of profit. The Constitution authorises the government to issue an ordinance when the Parliament is shut; but not to shut the Parliament to issue the ordinance.
But Dr Singh shut down the Parliament so that government could issue ordinance so save Sonia from the fate that her UPA Government inflicted on Jaya Bachchan.
<b>She resigns, not before all this. That is, she resigns after the strategy of the government to bail her out by an unconstitutional law got exposed. Why resign after the exposure? Why not a day earlier â on March 22 â so that the Parliament would not have been shut? Why the last minute resignation? The fear that the President might have sent the complaint against Sonia to the Election Commission before the government sent the ordinance to him? Or the fear that the President might not sign the ordinance forthwith and sit on it till the pending cases like Jayaâs, including Soniaâs, are decided? The last minute resignation conceals the obvious</b>Â <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->