NEW DELHI: President Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday escaped an election trial in the Supreme Court as a five-judge Constitution bench dismissed by a 3:2 majority a petition by Purno Sangma seeking quashing of Mukherjee's election to the top constitutional post.
While challenging Mukherjee's election on the ground that he was disqualified to contest as he had not resigned from two posts of offices of profit prior to filing of nomination, Sangma had pleaded with the bench of Chief Justice Altamas Kabir and Justices P Sathasivam, S S Nijjar, J Chelameswar and Ranjan Gogoi for a detailed trial on his election petition and decide his objections after a thorough scrutiny.
But the bench decided that Sangma's petition did not disclose such documents and plead issues that required entertaining the plea beyond the preliminary scrutiny stage for a full-fledged trial which could have involved Mukherjee's possible cross-examination by Sangma's lawyer.
CJI Kabir and Justices Sathasivam and Nijjar formed the majority to say, "We are not convinced that in the facts and circumstances of the case, the petition deserves a full and regular hearing as contemplated under Rule 20 of Order XXXIX of the Supreme Court Rules, 1966." Justices Chelameswar and Gogoi, in separate judgments, dissented with the majority view and said the facts and documents annexed by Sangma with his petition challenging Mukherjee's election warranted a detailed hearing.
Justice Chelameswar did not agree with the majority view but said he would soon furnish reasons for his dissent. Justice Gogoi said that Mukherjee needed to prove during the detailed hearing that he did not hold any office of profit at the time of filing of nomination.
"No conclusion that a regular hearing in the present case will be a redundant exercise or an empty formality can be reached so as to dispense with the same and terminate the petition at the stage of its preliminary hearing under Order XXXIX Rule 13. The election petition, therefore, deserves a regular hearing," Justice Gogoi said in his dissenting judgment.
Senior advocate P H Parekh, who has represented the last four presidents, including Mukherjee, as counsel in SC, said V V Giri was the last president to face cross-examination in an election petition. "He was made to sit on the dais away from the judges when he answered questions from the petitioner's counsel," Parekh recalled.
After that, Rule 13 of the Supreme Court Rules was amended so as to provide for preliminary scrutiny of election petitions against the president so as to weed out frivolous pleas at an early stage without embarrassing the country's first citizen by calling him to answer questions during cross-examination.
The majority judgment, authored by the CJI for himself and Justices Sathasivam and Nijjar, was emphatic in rejecting Sangma's counsel Ram Jethmalani's plea for a detailed hearing on the petition, which alleged that Mukherjee incurred disqualification for filing nomination without resigning as leader of Congress in Lok Sabha and chairman of Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.
"In the instant case, the office of chairman of the institute did not provide for any of the amenities indicated hereinabove and, in fact, the said office was also not capable of yielding profit or pecuniary gain," Justice Kabir said. "In regard to the office of the leader of the House, it is quite clear that the respondent had tendered his resignation from membership of the House before he filed his nomination papers for the presidential election," the majority judgment said.
It said the controversy that Mukherjee had resigned from membership of the Congress party and its Central Working Committee allegedly on June 25, 2012 was set at rest by the affidavit filed by the president's private secretary Pradeep Gupta.
Pranab escapes facing poll trial, SC bench knocks out Sangma plea 3:2
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Pranab escapes facing poll trial, SC bench knocks out Sangma plea 3:2
