TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: Goa’s lone Rajya Sabha MP Shantaram Naik who heads the Parliamentary Committee on Law has announced that the Centre would approach the Supreme Court for a review of its recent judgement on barring persons behind bars from contesting elections.
Addressing a press conference, Naik said that the order was subject to misuse by ruling governments who would put their opponents behind bars to ensure that they cannot contest.
“The government will approach the (Supreme) Court and request it to review its judgement,” Naik said.
“An opposition politician will be put in police custody by the ruling people and then his political career would be finished,” Naik said.
While Shantaram said that it would be the Central government that was going ahead with the review petition, the government would not mind bringing all parties on board in this decision.
Naik also said that the RTI act would also be amended either during the forthcoming Parliament session or by ordinance to ensure that political parties are kept outside the ambit of the information law.
He also said that such a judgment would be politically misused by those in power. In a landmark judgement earlier this week, the Supreme Court barred politicians put behind bars from contesting even without being convicted.
This judgement accompanied another ground-breaking verdict, which disqualifies politicians from contesting elections if they are convicted by trial courts, even if they have gone in appeal.
“If the deadline given by the chief information commissioner (CIC) to political parties to appoint a public information officer is close, we may even issue an ordinance,” Naik said adding that in this case there was a consensus amongst political parties that the RTI act should not apply to them.
A recent chief information commissioner’s ruling bringing seven political parties under the RTI act and asking them to appoint a PIO was met with united opposition from the political class.
Meanwhile, the directorate of information has released a press communiqué stating that the
Division bench of High Court of Bombay at Goa comprising Justices R C Chauhan and Justice U V Bakre on Friday after hearing the arguments of the Petitioner dismissed the PIL challenging the appointment of K D Row as chairman of the Goa Public Service Commission.
