Office of profit: SC rejects Jaya plea against expulsion

The Supreme Court today rejected actor turned parliamentarian Jaya Bachchan’s plea against her expulsion from the Rajya Sabha for holding an “office of profit”.

The Supreme Court today rejected actor turned parliamentarian Jaya Bachchan’s plea against her expulsion from the Rajya Sabha for holding an “office of profit”.

In the process, the bench, comprising Justice Y K Sabharwal, Justice C K Thakker and Justice R V Raveendran, also clarified the law on the subject, saying it was enough if the office carried any remuneration and that it was immaterial whether the holder of the office actually derived that. Fully backing the Election Commission’s recommendation to the President to disqualify Jaya, the court said, “as of now, the Commission had no option in keeping with the line of judgment”.

Observing that this was the stated position in law since 1954, the bench rejected arguments by Senior Counsel Fali Nariman that the law had been changed by a 1975 decision of a division bench of the Apex Court. The court said: “In view of the stated position from 1954 to the Shibu Soren case, the observations made by the two-judge bench can be of no avail. In this regard, we do not find that the position whether petitioner received any actual remuneration is of no significance.”

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Nariman tried to draw a distinction between remuneration receivable from the office and actually received. Admitting the position laid down by the SC in a 1954 case and later in the Soren case that it was enough that remuneration was “receivable”, he pointed out that in a 1975 case of Divya Prakash, a two-judge bench had taken a contrary stand.

But the arguments failed to cut any ice with the bench.

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