The Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved its verdict on two petitions challenging the legality of the amendment brought in the Parliament (Prevention of Disqualification) Amendment Act, 2006 or what is commonly known as the office-of-profit law.This comes a day after a Bench presided by Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan raised some serious questions to the Centre, regarding its intent in bringing the said amendment that provides for protection for holding certain specific offices of profit. The amendment has been allegedly viewed as a way to protect certain selected MPs/MLAs from disqualification from Parliament or the Assemblies on account of holding an office of profit.Earlier during the day, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Gopal Subramanium apparently agreed to the ‘discrimination’ in the offices given protection under the Act, as he submitted that the list of offices exempted from coming under the Act needs to be expanded. “The court is right to say exemption should be applied to all authorities equally,” he said in reply to repeated queries by the court regarding the exemptions made. After the ASG informed that a Joint Parliamentary Committee has been set up by the Government to bring a comprehensive amendment to the Act by exempting more offices from coming under the law, the Bench felt it should examine each office. Contending that as of date since only 55 offices are exempted, “it was only a matter of academic interest as the tenure of most of the MPs occupying them would be over soon”, the judges agreed.The Bench, had on Tuesday, questioned the motive behind bringing an amendment to the office-of-profit law, allegedly for protecting some individuals from being disqualified from the membership of Parliament.
