Office Of Profit Issue: Arvind Kejriwal And AAP Are Being Unbelievably Clever By The Half 

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has had a tumultuous history ever since its inception with allegations of corruption, lack of intent to govern and its strategy of baseless mud-slinging for political gains. The self-professed party of honest politics and of conscientious apolitical actors, has actually had very little substance to back its high-pitched rhetoric on tackling corruption.

From the Chief Minister sleeping on the road to a laughable spectacle of tampering a poor prototype of an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM), the AAP has only repeatedly shown its hunger to thrive on news cycles. But, these public spectacles cannot be dismissed as naïvete or inexperience, because through the course of time they have displayed unmatched arrogance and contempt for engagement, dissent and the very ideals they have stood for.

Their commitment towards tackling corruption was challenged by the unceremonious exit of Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav who questioned the alleged financial dealings for election seats within the party. The very murky and questionable selection of an unknown politician Sushil Gupta to the Rajya Sabha, the open accusations of corruption on the AAP Minister Satyendra Jain and the dangerous accusations of partisanship on a constitutional body like the Election Commission (EC) are some more cases which could be cited.

But, the understanding of corruption is not just limited to unscrupulous financial dealings but also extends to subversion of constitutional protocols for seeking an office of profit. The recent recommendation of the Election Commission disqualifying 20 AAP MLAs for occupying offices of profit comes at the back of a well planned and unethical attempt to subvert the law.

Twenty one MLAs were appointed as Parliamentary Secretaries on March 2015 and a bill was passed three months later with the malicious intention of exempting the parliamentary secretaries from office of profit.

A little understanding of parliamentary secretaries and office of profit is required here.

A parliamentary secretary position is considered akin to that of a cabinet minister rank. There are two issues here. The first is that there is a cap on the number of ministers that a state and UT can propose from within elected members. For states the figure stands at 15 percent and for a ‘half-state’ like Delhi, it stands at 10 percent.

This means that the Delhi government could ideally only have 7 ministers. Through this malafide legislation and this malicious appointment, the Delhi government had exceeded the number by about four times.

But the larger point of contention was holding an office of profit as parliamentary secretaries need to be paid and their travel and work spaces have to be provided for. The AAP government till date keeps countering that since the Parliamentary Secretaries are not getting paid and do not use official vehicles or office spaces, it is not an office of profit.

But this is a loose and incomplete understanding of an office of profit. The constitution calls for a separation of power between the legislature and the executive. The legislature holds the executive accountable for governance and hence, if an elected MP, MLA holds both a position of profit under the government, then it is a conflict of interest. This will not allow the elected representative to critique the government and dispassionately evaluate its work as they are a beneficiary of the same government.

The benefits of holding an office of profit are therefore much more than just drawing a salary or getting a government vehicle. It is a position that could influence the work of the member, it could create patronage and importantly it could give undue powers to the holder of the position which is unconstitutional. Therefore, an office of profit being subsumed to just remuneration is disingenuous and an attempt to mislead.

It is adequately clear that the AAP government had allowed and even proactively taken the back-door legislation route to exempt its MLAs from any charges. Apart from exceeding the number of capped ministers, this blatant violation of power has tried to trivialize the conflict of interest associated with such appointments. For any political party, worth their anti-corruption credentials, this would be a major issue to hold all elected members accountable to.

In the past, politicians like Jaya Bachchan and Sonia Gandhi also have had to face the music over similar allegations. There have been precedents of the courts not holding a favourable opinion of such appointments and the Hyderabad High Court, the Calcutta High Court and the Goa bench of the Mumbai high court have in the past quashed similar bills.

Legal opinion might still be divided on what ‘office of profit’ entails, but this is yet another instance of the duplicitous moral high standing of AAP.

If the disqualification of 20 MLAs is agreed to by the President, the party is going to face political mayhem in Delhi. The moral decay of the party has been swift and consistent and the hollowness of their claims on anti-corruption was visible to most from the very beginning. With their stand on corruption and on internal democracy muddied beyond recognition, this could very well be a point of reckoning for the future of the party.

But in the end the unravelling of AAP has resulted in a huge disservice for idealism in politics. The party which gained prominence as an alternative to politics the way it is in India has actually proved to be an eye-wash for most. The credibility of alternative politics and political idealism has been severely dented and that perhaps will the most lasting legacy of AAP.