Parliamentary Secretaries or rather the post of Parliamentary Secretary has now been propelled to the news thanks to the move initiated by the Manipur Pradesh Congress Committee to disqualify the 12 MLAs who have been appointed as Parliamentary Secretaries in the BJP led coalition Government.
Interesting this is, for while the State Congress has been deafeningly quiet on the six MLAs who have ditched the Congress to sup with the BJP with one even being named in the Council of Ministers, it has raised an audible voice on the appointment of Parliamentary Secretaries.
All the six renegade Congress MLAs are still MLAs and this literally amounts to defeating the spirit of the 10th Schedule of the Constitution of India.
Here are supposed to be law makers literally violating the Constitution and no one seems to have given any thought to it.
Imagine the situation if a lesser mortal violates the one way traffic norms and overlooks the necessity to stop when signalled by the traffic cops to stop !
Such is the manner in which the laws of the land have been hijacked and reduced to the status of a caricature by the powers that be.
To repeat a point already made in this column sometime back, compare the situation with Goa when Vishwajit Rane who had got elected to the Goa Assembly on a Congress ticket first resigned from the Assembly, quit the Congress and then decided to go in for the by election on a local party’s ticket which was a partner of the BJP.
This is what should have followed here too, that is if the honourable elected MLAs had any sense of the morally right and wrong.
More funny than the stand of the rogue Congress MLAs is the complete silence maintained by the Congress on the MLAs who have defected to the BJP and the BJP which have welcomed them with open arms.
This type of politics stinks.
So while the Congress is silent on the MLAs who have switched sides, blatantly violating the 10th Schedule of the Constitution, it has nonetheless gone ahead and met Governor Dr Najma Heptulla seeking the disqualification of 12 MLAs who have been named as Parliamentary Secretaries.
A clear indication that no political party in the State is ready to follow the rule of law.
The Supreme Court has already struck down the appointment of Parliamentary Secretaries and it is a wonder that the BJP led Government is still sticking to its earlier stand of having Parliamentary Secretaries.
This attitude of caring two hoots about what the apex Court of the country has ruled is what is hard to digest.
The High Court of Manipur too had directed the State Government to respond to a PIL to quash the order which appointed the 12 Parliamentary Secretaries sometime in May this year giving five weeks time to respond.
All these instances clearly demonstrate how in the rush for power and the accompanying pelf that comes with sticking to one’s seat of power, the rule of the law is being given the quiet burial.
Or is it a case of dodging the law and reaping the benefits ?
Let the ruling of the Supreme Court reign here and do away with the posts of Parliamentary Secretaries.
At the same time, it would be better for the Congress to see what it can do to get the 6 MLAs who have violated the 10th Schedule disqualified.
This would mean letting the rule of the law prevail.
Source: The Sangai Express
