AAP leaders complain to EC against parl secys in 13 other states

NEW DELHI: Alleging ‘preferential treatment’ to other states, Aam Aadmi Party leaders visited the Election Commission and filed a complaint against the appointmentof

NEW DELHI: Alleging ‘preferential treatment’ to other states, Aam Aadmi Party leaders visited the Election Commission and filed a complaint against the appointmentof parliamentarysecretaries in 13 states.

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AAP leaders Sanjay Singh, Dilip Pandey, Raghav Chadha and Deepak Bajpai met election commissioners A K Joti and O P Rawat and asked them to disqualifyMLAswhohavebeenappointed as parliamentary secretaries in 13 states across the country for violating the office-of-profit rule.

Thursday’s complaint came after the Election Commission’s notices to 21 Aam Aadmi Party MLAs, earlier this year, who were appointed as parliamentary secretaries.

A complainant had written to the President last year, who forwarded the letter to the Election Commission. The complaint asked for the disqualification of the MLAs for allegedly violating the office-of-profit rule.The MLAs will present themselves before the Commission on July 14.

AAP has maintained that the office-of-profit rule has not been violated since the 21 MLAs do not get a salary or any other pecuniary benefits.

The AAP government’s plans to make the post of parliamentary secretaries permanent and with pecuniary benefits also fell flat after the President returned the amendment to the Bill that would have exempted MLAs from disqualification and opened doors to made the positions permanent in the future.

Senior party leader, Sanjay Singh, after meeting the commissioners, said, “These parliamentary secretaries (in 13 states) have been drawing fat salaries, availing facilities meant for ministers, they have been given bungalows and staff. State governments are spendingcroresof rupeesonthese parliamentary secretaries. It’s a clear case of office of profit. On one hand these parties are targeting honest MLAs of the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi who are not getting any pecuniary benefits, on the other hand they are spending crores on their parliamentary secretaries,” he said.

The states against whose parliamentary secretaries the complaint has been filed include Punjab, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Nagaland, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.