The Election Commission has decided to issue notice to Congress President Sonia Gandhi on a presidential reference on the petition seeking her disqualification from Parliament for receiving the ‘Order of Leopold’ from the Belgium Government in 2006. The issue, pending before the commission for last seven months, was reportedly decided on Wednesday by a 2:1 majority after a series of meetings on the matter due to differences of opinion between Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami and election commissioners Navin Chawla and S Y Quraishi. While Gopalaswami and Chawla supported the move, Quraishi was against it. However, on the question of referring the matter to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) for opinion, the two ECs supported the move while the CEC opposed it.Earlier on Monday, the EC could not arrive at any decision due to sharp differences between the CEC and the ECs. While Gopalaswami felt that a notice should be issued to Sonia seeking her comments, Chawla opposed the move.Chawla’s turnaround on the matter is a bit surprising as he is already under fire from the BJP which is seeking his removal for being partisan to the Congress.In their last full commission meeting on Monday, Chawla reportedly told other members that he would like to go through the complaint in detail and pressed for deferring the matter. Sonia was conferred the ‘Order of Leopold’, the second highest civilian award in Belgium, and an honorary doctorate by the Belgian Government during her visit to the country in November 2006. The petition was filed by an advocate from Kerala, contending that receiving the Belgian honour amounted to owing allegiance to the Constitution of that country and she should be disqualified on this ground. The petition, which was sent to the President, was forwarded to the commission seven months ago. The BJP on Monday severely criticised Chawla for opposing the CEC’s move to issue notice to Sonia, terming it as another instance of partisan behaviour towards the Gandhi family. The Congress, however, dismissed the complaint as laughable, with party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi saying there was no basis for the petition. Singhvi said the complaint against Sonia was akin to asking the South African Government to exile or disqualify its leader Nelson Mandela for being awarded the Bharat Ratna.
