Monday 13 June 2016

Question mark on the nomination of Dr Swamy and Siddhu to Rajya Sabha

There exists an provision in politics to nominated 12 member to the Rajya Sabha by the President. The person's who possess special knowledge and could be specialist in different fields of Art, science etc can be nominated as Rajya Sabha members by the President. In the recently ensued process of nomination has brought forward two lapses by the government in case of Dr Subramanyam Swamy and Navjyot Singh Siddhu, who have been nominated for Rajya Sabha under the category inspite of being active office bearers of the BJP. In a response provided to RTI Activist Anil Galgali by the Union Home Ministry Dr Swamy has been declared as Economist and Siddhu as a cricketer to be nominated by the President to the Rajya Sabha. RTI Activist Anil Galgali had sought information from the President's office about the details of persons nominated for the Rajya Sabha along with the details of the selection procedure. Avoiding responding to the query directly, the President's office transferred the applicant to the Ministry of Home Affairs. The Director of the Union Home Ministry, Ashutosh Jain informed Galgali that The President on the recommendation of the Prime Minister and as per provisions of Section 80(1) & 80(3) of the constitution has nominated members to the Rajya Sabha. Out of the 11 person's nominated, 2 names are directly and actively associated with politics. At the time of nomination, Dr Subramanyam Swamy and Navjyot Singh Siddhu were members of the BJP National Executive. Both the names are published on the official website of the BJP since past and is continued to be displayed up till now. Rules for the nomination of eminent personalities to the Rajya Sabha state that the person nominated can take membership of any political party if he or she joins within six months of assuming the membership. Also it is important that they should not be members of any political parties before nomination. Citing this, Anil Galgali has appealed to the President Shri Pranab Mukherjee to remove these 2 persons and nominate 2 new persons who belong to the category. Dr Swamy was a Lecturer at the London School of Economics up til 1997, and had been a Member of Rajya Sabha for the first time in 1974 as a Jansangh member from Uttar Pradesh. He has been a member for four terms in the period from different political parties. Due to his engagement with politics, Dr Swamy seldom found time to study on Economics. Similarly Siddhu too has been a BJP Loksabha MP between 2004 to 2009 from Amritsar . He played cricket up to 1998. He has been also busy with politics for the past 18 years apart from television shows. Anil Galgali has pointed out 2 main objections on the nominations stating that both the nominees have not been active in the fields that they have mentioned for the membership. This type of backdoor entry for professional politicians have hurt the main aims of the constitution. The person's supposed to be nominated as President's nominees must be from the fields of Literature, Science, Arts and Social Service, they should possess special knowledge of the field and working experience to enrich the parliament proceedings. In a letter address to Dr Swamy and Sidhu, Anil Galgali urges that to maintain morality they both should resign from the membership and came forward to give chance a person from the fileds of Special Knowledge.

2 comments: