CM will get 2 months as MLC if appointed

The Covid-19 outbreak has complicated chief minister (CM) Uddhav Thackeray’s election to the state legislature. While the state cabinet decided that governor Bhagat

The Covid-19 outbreak has complicated chief minister (CM) Uddhav Thackeray’s election to the state legislature. While the state cabinet decided that governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari must nominate Thackeray from his quota to the state legislative council, the CM will get a tenure of only two months to the upper house. This is because the term of the two vacant seats from the Governor’s quota ends on June 6. Thackeray will only get the remainder of this term.

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The Governor can appoint 12 people from the fields of art, sports and social work to the upper house on the recommendation of the government.

Thackeray was not a member of the legislative council or the legislative assembly when he took over the reins of the state on November 28. He had six months to get elected to either of the house and that period ends on May 28. If he is not nominated or elected in this time, not just Thackeray but the entire cabinet would have to resign.

The CM was to get elected to the council through elections for one of the nine seats to be held in April. However, the polls have been indefinitely postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak.

“Thackeray will not get a full term of six years. He will be able to get only the remainder term as an MLC and the term of that particular seat is ends on June 6. He will have to be re-nominated by the Governor to continue working as the CM,” said a senior official from the state legislature.

Given the uncertainty due to the outbreak, the question is what happens after June 6 when Thackeray’s term as a potential MLC ends. If the governor renominates him to the post, all may be well but there could be a legal tangle over whether a person can be reappointed as a minister without being elected to (any of the two Houses of) the state legislature.

A Supreme Court judgment issued on August 17, 2001 has termed such reappointment of a minister in the then Punjab government without getting elected as “improper and undemocratic”. “Tej Prakash Singh had resigned from the position as a minister on March 8, 1996, but was reappointed without getting elected in the same term of the legislative assembly as a minister on November 23, 1996, which was challenged in the court of law. The judgement was given by the bench of justice RC Lahoti and KG Balakrishnan,” said a senior law department official.

According to Article 164 (4) of the Constitution, “a minister, who for any period of six consecutive months, is not a member of the legislature shall at the expiration of that period cease to be a minister”.The article is silent on reappointments.