TEAM HERALD
NEW DELHI: Goa’s Congress MP Shantaram Naik on Friday moved three private member bills in the Rajya Sabha, including one to restrain the Election Commission from deleting names of the Goans from the electoral rolls just because their births are registered in Portugal.
The Bill seeks to add a proviso to Section 16 of the Representation of the People Act that no name shall be struck off as an elector on the ground that he or she lost the Indian citizenship by virtue of the birth registered in Portugal, unless by a specific judgment or order.
Naik said he has brought the Bill because a piquant situation created by Portugal’s decision to permit the people of Goa born before the liberation of the territory to register their births in its registry. There are hundreds who have never visited Portugal and do not even have passport to travel there and as such it will be injustice to declare them the Portuguese citizens, he said.
In a statement of objects and reasons attached to the Bill, Naik said the government had assured him in the Rajya Sabha to fine a solution to the vexed problem, but it has adopted a time-consuming process of an authority created to decide the citizenship issue by examining the case of each affected person. As (Assembly) elections are fast approaching, the Bill seek to protect the names of these citizens from being deleted from the electoral rolls in Goa, it said.
Naik said his prime concern is about the fundamental right of a vast number of the Goans, more particularly voters belonging to minority community (Catholics), if they are sent back from the polling booths in the event of their names being deleted from the electoral rolls.
In yet another Bill, Naik has sought to amend the Constitution to restrain the Election Commission from usurp Parliament’s sole authority to frame laws by issuing instructions and orders under the cover of powers conferred on it under Article 324(1) for “superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of the electoral rolls for, and the conduct of, all elections to Parliament and to the Legislature of every State.”
The Bill seeks to add a proviso in Article 324 that “provided that notwithstanding any judgment or order of any court, nothing in clause (1) of article 324 shall authorise the Election Commission to pass any order or issue any instruction covering a substantive law with respect to which Parliament has the legislative competence.”
Naik said Article 324 does not authorise the Election Commission to play the role of the law maker which has been assigned to Parliament and hence the Bill to amend the Constitution.
His third Bill seeks to amend the Indian Forests Act of 1927 on declaration of the private forests only through a specific law passed for the purpose.
