Both houses of Karnataka assembly passed a bill which exempts CM’s political secretary from the office of . A political secretary is given cabinet rank, bungalows, perks, secretaries, vehicles and DA and is generally considered an office of profit. But the bill which was passed without discussion will exempt the political secretary to chief minister of the state from office of profit clause. The government brought the bill because Kumaraswamy wants to appoint those MLAs as political secretary who did not get the cabinet berth in the coalition government. It is being reported that the MLAs who did not get a cabinet berth are threatening to cross the bench or leave the party. By appointing them as political secretary, the coalition government will be able to appease these unhappy MLAs as they will enjoy all the benefits of a minister.
Articles 102(1) (a) and 191(1) (a) of the Constitution barred MPs and MLAs from holding office of profit. “A person shall be disqualified for being chosen as, and for being, a member of either House of Parliament, (a) if he holds any office of profit under the Government of India or the Government of any State, other than an office declared by Parliament by law not to disqualify its holder,” says the law. Karnataka is not the first state which brought such a bill to appease unhappy MLAs and give them a lavish life on the expense of honest taxpayer’s money.
Many non-BJP ruled states like West Bengal, Karnataka, Telangana, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Punjab, Mizoram and Manipur have brought similar bills to provide benefits like cabinet rank, bungalows, perks, secretaries, vehicles and DA to as many MLAs as they wished. The law prevents the governments from appointing more than a fixed percentage of elected legislators as ministers. Only 15 percent of total legislators can be appointed as ministers but to form the government more than 50 percent of the legislators are needed.
There has been lot of controversy around appointment of MLAs in office of profit by various governments. The high courts of West Bengal, Telangana and Punjab declared it as ‘unconstitutional and struck down appointments. The apex court of India also struck down ‘The Assam Parliamentary Secretaries (Appointment, Salaries, Allowances and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 2004’ in July 2017. In January this year, Election Commission of India (ECI) issued show cause notice to 27 Aam Aadmi Party MLAs who held the office of profit as parliamentary secretary and later disqualified 20 of them for the same.
Most of the regional parties and coalition governments involve in such practices to appease unhappy MLAs. The parties with strong ideological leanings do not offer such concessions to their coalition partners but parties like Congress, TMC are involved in such appeasement gimmicks.
The coalition government in Karnataka agreed to allot 22 ministries to Congress and 12 to JD(S) but many MLAs of both parties are still seeking cabinet berth but there is not enough space to accommodate each one of them. So, the government decided to bring this bill so it could appoint many MLAs as political secretaries and give them the benefits enjoyed by ministers. The only loser in this case is the common tax paying citizen I guess, but that’s hardly something that matters to opportunistic coalition governments.
