Nominated councillor can’t be appointed as Leader of the House: HC

Mumbai: The Bombay high court has set aside appointment of Ganesh Bidkar, a nominated councillor of Pune Municipal Corporation as Leader of the House, observing that under provisions of the Maharashtra Municipal Corporation (MMC) Act only an elected councillor could be appointed to the post

Mumbai: The Bombay high court has set aside appointment of Ganesh Bidkar, a nominated councillor of Pune Municipal Corporation as Leader of the House, observing that under provisions of the Maharashtra Municipal Corporation (MMC) Act only an elected councillor could be appointed to the post.

The advocates argued that as per section 19-1A of the MMC Act only an elected councillor could be appointed as Leader of House. (Shankar Mourya/HT photo)

Ganesh Bidkar had been nominated to the PMC after losing in the elections. However, after he was nominated as the BJP party leader in the corporation, he was appointed as Leader of the House which was opposed.

The division bench of justice A A Sayed and justice S G Dige while hearing the petition of Ravindra Dhangekar was informed by advocates Kapil Rathor and Harshad Mandke that after the PMC elections in 2017, Bidkar had been nominated to the council by the BJP which had secured 99 seats and could nominate three members. Thereafter, Bidkar was named as the leader of the BJP party in the corporation following which he was appointed as Leader of the House.

The advocates argued that as per section 19-1A of the MMC Act only an elected councillor could be appointed as Leader of House. The section says, “An elected Councillor who is, for the time being, the Leader of the Party having the greatest numerical strength and recognised as such by the Mayor shall be the Leader of the House.”

In light of the Act, the advocates stated that Bidkar was nominated and not elected and hence he did not fall in the eligible category to be appointed as Leader of the House.

Senior advocates Ravi Kadam for Bidkar and Milind Sathe for the Mayor who had approved the appointment of Bidkar as Leader of the House opposed the petition and said that the same was not maintainable as Dhangekar had not suffered any injury or loss due to Bidkar’s appointment.

The bench was further informed that the word ‘elected’ in section 19-1A would also mean ‘nominated’ as nomination is nothing but election. The word `Councillor’ was defined in section 2 (11) to mean a person elected as a member of the Corporation and includes a nominated Councillor too. Therefore Respondent No. 1, though a ‘nominated Councillor’, was also an ‘elected Councillor’ under section 19-1A of the said Act and hence the challenge was without any basis.

After hearing the submissions, the bench noted in its order, “The presence of prefixed word ‘elected’ to the word ‘Councillor’ cannot be ignored by an interpretative process. Therefore, the term ‘elected Councillor’ used in Section 19-1A would, in our view, mean only and only a Councillor who is directly elected at the election of the ward and not a nominated Councillor. If the intention of the Legislature was to treat both the categories of Councillors equally and to include even a nominated Councillor to be eligible to be appointed as Leader of the House under section 19-1A, the said section would have simply said ‘Councillor’ and not ‘elected Councillor’.”

In light of this observation the bench set aside the appointment of Bidkar as Leader of the House.